| Show THE CENSUS bureau has issued a circular in answer to the general complaints as to the delay in publishing pub-lishing the returnsand setting forth the state of forwardness of the work It shown that the previous censuses have been longer delayed in reaching the public The three quarto volumes of the census of 1870 were not issued from the printing office until 1873 although they bear the printing date of 1872 Of the four quarto volumes of the census of 1862 two bear the i printing date of 1860 and two the date of 1866 The superintendent says that many complete volumes in cloth and paper have already been printed for the use of the census cen-sus bureau and the plates of these and many others but await orders before copies for general distribution distribu-tion are stricken off He says that none of the matter published inthese volumes has ever before been issued so soon after the taking of the census cen-sus The superintendents explanation explana-tion is perfectly satisfactory in showing that the work of publication publica-tion is being done more expeditiously expedi-tiously than formerly but it does not explain why the publication is not forwarded much faster than it is The value to the public of a large portion of the material obtained ob-tained by the census lies in having it early Much of the information will be useless by the time it is issued In European countries three months is a long time to wait for the printing of complete census returns embracing more volumes and a broader range of statistics than those gathered by our census We are now on the third year since the last United States census was taken and all the public knows of the facts and figures gathered has been gleaned from newspapers |
