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ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR SCHWEIZERISCHE STATISTIK. (Schweizerische statistische Gesellschaft und Eidgenossisches statistisches Bureau.) Berne. Irreg. 1865+. STATISTICAL ASSOCIATION. NEW SERIES, No. 84 DECEMBER, 1908. UNIFORMITY AND CO-OPERATION IN THE CENSUS METHODS OF THE REPUBLICS OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT.* BY S. N. D. NORTH. To the United States of America belongs the unique distinction of having inaugurated the decennial census of national population and resources. The census of the population was ordained by the Constitution in 1790, and for every tenth year thereafter, as long as the nation shall endure. A census was necessary as a basis for Congressional apportionment, and no other reason was assigned for it in the Constitution. But it quickly dawned upon the statesmen of that formative era that apportionment, while an imperatively essential reason for the census, to determine the geographical readjustment of political power in a government founded upon the democratic principle, was only one of many purposes this decennial stock-taking could be made to serve. With successive decades, new lines of enumeration were added,-agriculture in 1820, manufactures in 1840, other inquiries at following decades, until the census became the periodical inventory of the national resources and the barometer of national development, in every phase and branch,-in human beings first, for the quality and character of its citizenship must always remain the most important national asset; after that the measurement and the differentiation of progress in every field where human energy finds play in the making of a nation. Thus the American census has become as essential, for definite knowledge of our national assets and liabilities, as the periodical book balancing of a business corporation in determining its solvency. * Address read at the recent Scientific Congress of American Republics at Santiago, Chile. So understood, the decennial census becomes the most important, useful, and productive undertaking of the federal government. As showing its relationship to the whole problem of modern government, the United States no sooner obtained a temporary responsibility in Cuba than it ordered a census, and the first step taken to re-establish civil government in the colonial possessions acquired by the war with Spain was the census of Porto Rico and the Philippine Islands. To this day we remain the only nation in the world which has grasped the possibilities and the advantages of enumeration by the census method. Germany has followed our example in adding agricultural statistics to the population count, and, within a limited scope, industrial statistics as well. So have Belgium and Holland, and France to some extent. England, for the first time, is at this moment engaged in taking a census of her manufactures, modelled almost entirely upon the American plan. Other nations have similar enlargement of census work under legislative consideration. But it remains the fact that the United States has discovered the full possibilities of the census; and upon that fact rests the claim that the American census system is the model which the South American republics can best follow. Many censuses had been taken before our first count in 1790, by many nations. The fundamental idea is as old as civilization itself. But that primitive census of 1790 was the first instance in history, so far as can be ascertained, in which the need for periodical enumerations at definitely fixed intervals was recognized and provided for. Unless established on the basis of regular recurrence, the census accomplishes only one-half of its full purpose. All civilization is in a state of flux. The elements comprising it advance and recede in harmony with no known law, with varying momentum in different countries, and in the same countries at different periods. To know where a country stands, from time to time, with respect to itself and with respect to other countries, we must know the measure of these variations. Without this knowledge we cannot diagnose their causes. Hence periodical enumeration is vital, wherever a national entity exists, if that nationality is to claim and maintain its proper place in the cosmos of nations. This has always been important. Before the twentieth century shall have reached its first quarter mile-post, it will be universally recognized as the most important economic and sociological knowledge that any nationality, be it big or little, can possess concerning itself. England, Denmark, and Norway were quick to recognize the significance of the periodical enumeration, after the United States had set the example. In 1801 each of these countries followed the example of the youngest of the nations, and has followed it ever since. It seems curious to us, who have ten times in a century readjusted representation in Congress, that England, with a decennial enumeration by which to determine exact apportionment, still fails to accept the actual population, or some definitely determined group of population, as the basis for parliamentary representation. But to England must be assigned one achievement, in census taking, unequalled in value and in magnitude,-an achievement which no other nation is likely to equal. She has ordained the decennial census, simultaneously with her own, in every colony and principality over which the British flag floats. And so we have had a census of Canada since 1825; of the Australian commonwealths from various dates, according to the degree of their development, beginning with New South Wales in 1821; and, most marvellous of all, since 1872, of the Empire of India, with its population of 250,000,000 people of hundreds of dialects and races. This latter is the most difficult and splendid achievement in census taking of which history makes record. France took her first regular census in 1800, but not until 1831 did that nation provide for its periodical recurrence. In that year France established the quinquennial enumeration, and she has since enforced a five-year count of the people. Thus we may assign to France a service to the science of census taking only second to that of the United States and Great Britain. For the one certain thing is, in the increasing complications of human society and the increasing tendency of the |