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Show WKr Efl rfj 4 a 4 Huge Army of Inquirers Sail flKlllff-triC 1 3 En tPllSUS Wi" Soon Sweep thc Country IfcJP&AC? BY RENE BACHE. ' - , in'o hundred millions of inhabitants! k ir. t lie advance estimate made by 'J 'ccim'iis buicaii of I ho population of 1 tiUintrd Stales in 1010. To count :5Si 55'. ami reckon up their m.inifold nc MLj Hps i iiik, as .a properly-taken iSt! fs "ns' '' ''pl,,fi picture of the ilo aI"l their doings .will bo ;in Si rmons 'ilv. There -will bo :i30 su-iiefcj? su-iiefcj? risors, .ipprinied by Ihc president, C$ ook .iff or .'is ninny peoKrniihic.il dis- fs, mid in Washington alone at least '""" 0 additional clerks will bo em- .y ?'! , liese clerks, throe-fourths of them Sen, will be appointed through the " , 1 .service commission, which will fL J examinations for the purpose be-I be-I ifclonji in every state andMcrritory. L Ipprson, male or female, who is not I ttpd with tuberculosis, will bo con- red eligible. As a matter of course, :r"" fc. will be a tremendous scramble Mi !thc .obs, which pay from $600 to 00 per annum. ISH'ti 'lien the first census of this couu- ivtfls taken, in 1790, the work was CIul eby (550 employes. To gather and ' ' Kfogothcr fho data of thc census of "TB will require the services of an jaiti'Ky'of nearly' 70,000 men and women .a&ftnuuiber much greater than the ca-?ialk ca-?ialk population of Xcw York and Bos-T Bos-T Jjvat the time of the taking o the r?l' census. jionc were to put side by side the ::!& res of the census ol! 790 and 1910 ttji tho latter will present themselves , n assembled), the most striking siu-ti siu-ti fact shown by the comparison would ? thc disappearance of the children. tlis entury ago one-half the population ; Jie United States consisted of boys drp girls under 1G 3'ears of age. To-ir3a To-ir3a itno proportion is only one-third, 'jkafir Treason for this fact is that people vSfii g fewer children into the world ,TO1B todays. If the average family in lem Country today were as prolific as , fcO 500, there would be 16,000,000 more th&a Iron in the United tSates than are 'JajPj ally living!' In 1700 there were in E Lcpuntry 7S0 persons over 20 vcurs tge for every 1,000 girls and 'boys 1 1 7e 4, rector of ?AP Gen sos JJ( i under 16. Today there are 160D sncli adults for every 1000 children. Thus it appears that, whereas in tho early dnj's of tho republic "thoro was a vary large proportion of young persons, per-sons, at present tho porccntngo of chil-drcu chil-drcu in tho population is comparatively small. In view of which facts, it is easy to understand tho statement of thc lato Carroll D. Wright that the artificial limiting of families was thc causa of a greater loss of population than war, pestilence and all other agcu. cics combined. Nevertheless, a baby is born every twelve seconds, and, thanks to this fact, about 2,500.000 fresh citizens wiir be added to our population in tho census vear 1910. Thc passing bell will toll every twenly-tliToe seconds, uslicrinp; 1,350,000 Americans out of tho -world during the twolvomoiith. Every tweuty-four tweuty-four soconds a marrintre will occur, civ-injr civ-injr expectation of filled cradles, and fivo of theso latter will bo supplied with occupants overy minute during; the year. So huge has thc population grown that tho taking of tho census ot 19J0 would be a job nothing short of appalling, ap-palling, wore it not for thc recent introduction in-troduction of machinery into thc business. busi-ness. It is reckoned that the mere tabulation tab-ulation of thc sex, age. nativit' and occupations of tho people, if made by hand, would consume, for those four items alone, thc entire timo of 100 clerks for eight years. But most of tho work is now done by machines, which may almost be said to think, and which, when the facts aro once gathered by the enumerators, attend to the task of putting thorn together. Thc census bureau is buying a larpe number of machines of entirely new-patterns, new-patterns, which are a great improvement improve-ment on any apparatus of thc kind hitherto known. They are run by olec-trieity, olec-trieity, and so perfect is their opera tion that if the clerk makes a mistake, the contrivance slops automatically. The tabulating machine will handle as many as -115 cards a minute; but tho actual speed in active work is about 'AoO. This is an averago of 80.000 or 90,000 cards in a working day of seven homs, including stoppages for reading dials, etc. As the census rot urns come in from the enumerators all over the country, in the shape of filled -in blanks, thc facts they contain will be transferred to cards each card representing one person. The facts in question are copied on the cards by punching holes, and thc position of each hole indicates its significance, so that no writing is required. Tims, for example, a few holes will tell that tho individual represented rep-resented by a card is white, of male sex, -If) years old, married, u teacher by profession, able to read, write, and .:peak English, with the additional information in-formation that he was born in 1'hig land, that ho has been in thc United States ten years, that he is a naturalized natural-ized citizen, and that he resides in thc Eighth ward. Albanv. X. Y. Jt will bo understood, then, that all tho people in the United States in the year 1910 will bo represented in the census bureau by ninety-odd millions of cards one card for each man, woman wom-an or child. The biggest, .job, however, is to put together the tacts on the cards, so as to make tables of figures', telling how many persons there are of each age; how many arc white, black or of mixed blood; how many cm-pen tors, undertakers and trained nurses there are: how many can read and write; and so on. even to (he tabulation tabula-tion of theso and hundreds of other matters in every township and city. To. do all tins by hand would be a vastly expensive and almost interminable intermina-ble ,i)b. But the machines attend to it automatically, and with an expedition expedi-tion that is nothing short of marvelous. All that is required is to feed the cards into them, and they do the rest, working work-ing out tho problems and giving tho results without possibility of error. With the help of ono of these contrivances, contriv-ances, a capable- clerk can tabulate from 80.000 to 90.000 cards, as already staled, in a working day, ;ill the fact's they contain being duly assembled and classified. Somo of the new lalmlaiors have adding machines attached to them, to prepare statistics of agriculture and certain other arrnngomcuts of figures information.-;. Another novel device is I an automatic sorter, which separates tho cards into classes, electro-magnets controlling their passage through a scries of chutes. Jndecd, all of tho mechanism from beginning to cud depends de-pends upon electricity, tho cui'-ent being be-ing made and broken by little metal rods which pass through the holes in tho cards. The ennme.ralors employed to gather I ho fads for the censii3 of 1910 from all parts of the country will number (i.1,000, and all of them will be men save perhaps a few, who, for f-ome spo pin 1 and particular reason, will bo of Llio gontlor sex. Some women did this kind of work for tho last census very 'tliciently ; but. ordinarily it is loo rough. not infrequently involving quite a little hardship of one kind nr '.'.other. The busiiubH of putting the I VJLLfiM bJL. UOu GH& Y I facts together, however, nft they I havo boon collected, will bo intrusted J mainly to women, tho grout majority of them young. Experience has shovrn that women S arc moro clover than men- at such work, B though thoy are not easy to manage. J A census bureau official said the other 3 day: "I once knew a man who had R twenty girls under his control, lie I would introduce any one of his friends S! to fifteen of them, saying that he reserved re-served the other five for himself. Now, during the last census 1 had 700 young women under me, and anybody "might have been welcome to them all. 1 say without reserve that a man who can j inanago that number of girls can do anythiug. The greatest difficulty is to curtail their chatter. Vet. in I he long run, tliC3' make belter clerks than the men." Tho census bureau is now a permanent perma-nent establishment in Washington. It is kept running, with a comparatively small force of clerks, all tho time, whereas it. used to go out. of existence after each enumeration of the population popula-tion was accomplished, springing up anew and suddenly every ten years, like a gigantic mushroom. As things aro at present arranged, however, the plant is always in existence on a small scalo. There is a skeleton organization, organiza-tion, so to speak, and this is readily expanded, when the occasion arises, into a lingo and effective machine for tho gathering of facts. Such an expansion ex-pansion is now beginning to tale place, and within a short time the machine will be in full operation for the taking of tho thirtcontli census of thc United States. |