Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/74

 54 important information is by attaching the inquiry to the census. The superintendent was required by special Act of Congress of February 22, 1890, to inquire also into the question of private mortgage indebtedness. This is partly accomplished by inquiries 26 to 30 on the population schedule. These returns will not, however, be very accurate, so that special agents have been appointed to search the official records of mortgages for ten years past, and in addition to seek further information from those persons who are returned on the population schedule as having mortgages on their property. The outcome of this inquiry is doubtful, but it is hoped that some light may be thrown on the vexed question of the indebtedness of the agricultural class.

These special investigations do not in reality belong to census work proper any more than do the wage statistics collected by the Board of Trade in England or the Gewerbezählung in Germany. Historically these inquiries have been gradually added to the census because that was the only way to persuade Congress to make them at all. There has also been a feeling in times past that Congress had no constitutional authority to make statistical investigations except in virtue of the clause providing for a census once in ten years. But the census has long outgrown that clause, and it would be impossible to justify even the questions on the population schedule as necessary to an enumeration of the people. With the employment of special agents the necessity for a uniform date has ceased, and it is the opinion of such men as General Walker and Commissioner Wright that it would be better to make these special inquiries at some other time, when the Census Office is less overwhelmed with work. The only objection that occurs to me is that it would interrupt the periodicity of the figures, some of which go back by ten-year intervals to 1850. Nevertheless the true solution will probably be the establishment of a permanent census office which shall take the census proper once in ten years, and conduct these special investigations at intervening periods.

Some description of the principal schedules employed in the United States Census may be of interest to persons to whom they are not readily accessible.

General Schedule No. 1.—Population. (Given in the text.)

General Schedule No. 2.—Statistics of Agriculture. This comprises the following general items:—

Name of the person conducting this farm. Colour of person.