Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/68

 48 the shade of colour of the individual would be contrary to our knowledge of physiological laws. Question 8 is asked in order to attain an approximate marriage-rate. It is one of those inquiries mentioned above which is forced upon the census simply because our federal form of government gives us no means of registering vital statistics for the whole country. Question 9 opens up many possibilities in social study, and there seems to be no reason why it should not be answered in the great majority of cases. The problem of the comparative fruitfulness of women of different race or nationality or social condition may possibly have some light thrown upon it by the combination of this question with the ages and nationality of the women. Questions l0 to 15 (and 21) are forced upon the census by the peculiar make-up of our population, with its large proportion of persons of foreign birth and of foreign descent. If we neglected to get these statistics and combine them with those of sex, age, conjugal condition, occupation, illiteracy, disease, and death we should miss the greatest opportunity for ethnological and sociological investigation which is offered anywhere in the world, besides depriving ourselves of information absolutely essential to our own welfare. The presence of the blacks at the South and of the foreign-born in the North constitute the most important demological problems with which we have to deal. Question 16 will doubtless contend with the usual difficulties of an occupation census, but public opinion would not permit its omission. Question 17 labours under the disadvantage of requiring exact knowledge or memory on the part of the person concerned, and when it is answered by the wife or other member of the family in respect to the husband or father it will probably lack accuracy. I doubt if it will throw any light on the great question of the unemployed. Questions 18 to 20 present but little difficulty in this country except in large cities where numbers of foreigners are congregated, from whom it is difficult to get any information. Questions 22 to 24, and 26 to 30, seemed to awaken more opposition before the census was taken than any others, the first group on the ground that it was cruel and inhuman to ask persons to reveal family sorrows and afflictions, and the second on the ground that it was an invasion of the rights of the citizen to ask him questions about his property. As both of these groups of questions were intended to be the basis for supplementary inquiries, I will speak of them further on.

Such is the explanation of the complicated and unwieldy population schedule which the Census Office sent out and expected