No, it
had to be a winter job, and in the Geography section--where I was last
year--it took us all our time to estimate satisfactory enumeration
districts for Alaska."

[Illustration: OVER THE TRACKLESS SNOW WITH DOG-TEAM. Census agents in
Alaska starting on perilous journeys in the most severe winter ever
known in sub-Arctic regions. (_Courtesy of the Bureau of the Census._)]

"The Geography section?" queried Hamilton in surprise. "I hadn't heard
of that. What is that part of the census work for?"

"To map out the enumeration districts," his superior explained. "That is
a most important part of the work. You remember that the enumeration
district was supposed to provide exactly a month's work for each man?"

"Yes," Hamilton answered, "I know I had to hustle in order to get mine
done in the month."

"Supposing," said the other, "that all the people that were on your
schedule had lived in villages close together, would it have taken you
as long to do?"

"Of course not," Hamilton replied, "I could have done it in half the
time. What delayed things was riding from farm to farm, and they were
scattered all over the countryside."

"Exactly," Barnes continued, "but I suppose you never stopped to think
that the number of people in each district and the nature of the ground
to be covered both had to be considered. Then allowance had to be made
for the enumeration of those not readily accessible, and for such
natural obstacles as unbridged rivers; all these had to be mapped out
and gone over by the Census Bureau before the sections were assigned."

"No," the boy replied, "I never really stopped to think who it was that
made up all those districts. And, now you come to speak of it, I don't
see how it could have been done without being on the ground."

"Yet it is evident," the other said, "that it must have been done. It
wouldn't be fair to tell a man to finish a district that represented
seven or eight weeks' work, nor to promise a month's work to a man and
then give him a district that had only two or three weeks' employment.
You couldn't alter the districts afterwards, either, as everything had
to be prepared in Washington for enumeration and tabulation by the
original districts as mapped out."

"You mean," said Hamilton, "that every square mile of territory in the
United States, the number of people on it, the kind of land it was, the
roads and trails, the distance from the nearest town, the rivers, and
the locati