Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/88

78 full and complete results without regard to the time taken. For the population the English method was used, as already stated. The manufactures and agricultural products were secured on individual schedules, statements being certified to by proprietors. In 1885 the card schedule for population was successfully introduced, the other features of the 1875 system and per diem compensation being retained.

Under the Federal system, which I have said is so faulty, all data are collected, so far as population, agriculture, and the general statistics of manufacture are concerned, by enumerators selected by the supervisors and appointed by the Superintendent. The supervisors under the eleventh census are fairly compensated; the enumerators are not. The compensation for enumerating the population under the existing law is in most of the country two cents for each living inhabitant, two cents for each death reported, fifteen cents for each farm, twenty cents for each establishment of productive industry enumerated and returned, and five cents for each surviving soldier, sailor, or marine, or each widow of a soldier, sailor, or marine returned. In some subdivisions the allowance for each living inhabitant may be increased, but the compensation allowed to any enumerator in any difficult district shall not be less than three dollars nor more than six dollars per day of ten hours' actual field work, when a per diem compensation shall be established by the Secretary of the Interior instead of a per capita; nor, where the per capita rate is increased, shall it exceed three cents for each living inhabitant, twenty cents for each farm, and thirty cents for each establishment of productive industry; nor shall claims for mileage or traveling expenses be allowed any enumerator in either class of cases, except where difficulties are extreme, and then only when authority has been previously granted by the Superintendent of the Census. The allowance relative to inhabitants and deaths is the same as under the tenth census. There is an increase of a few cents in the compensation for enumerating farms and establishments or productive industry. It may not be possible nor wise to change this method, but it is possible and wise to make the compensation fair and just. Under these rates it is almost impossible for an enumerator to earn a fair day's wage if he does his duty. In localities where the population is dense, he can earn three or four dollars per day. His ambition is—and human nature prompts it—to secure as many names as possible, and in too many instances he will do this at the expense of accuracy; for accuracy consumes time. Furthermore, he may be inclined, in the very worst localities, in the slums of great cities, to omit, for personal reasons of convenience or otherwise, to enumerate all the people, being contented with taking the population in sight; in other words, two