Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1872.djvu/19

Rh are now in press, whether for the three quarto volumes authorized, or for the compendium to be published in octavo. The quarto volumes are at the present date wholly in type, except about 150 pages of the volume on Industry. The Population volume will, it is anticipated, be laid upon the desks of members on the assembling of Congress, in December. The other volumes will follow with only such interval as is required for press-work and binding. The early completion of the census is a subject of congratulation, inasmuch as the use to be made of the statistics obtained with so much of labor and expense depends very greatly on the promptitude of publication. With such rapid changes of population and industry as occur in the United States, the census remains even approximately true but very few years after the date of enumeration. Every year, therefore, for which the publication of results is delayed, subtracts a large portion of the actual present utility of the census. There still remains, it is true, a secondary use, namely, for statistical retrospect and comparison, which is independent of this consideration. But the main object of the census, in which alone would be found the justification for so great an expenditure of labor and money, is its immediate use in directing the legislation and the industrial and social efforts of the present age. For this purpose, every month saved in publication amounts to a large positive addition to the value of the work.

The appropriation made at the last session of Congress for illustrating graphically the quarto volumes of the census has been expended with results which, it is believed, will meet with cordial recognition and approval from Congress and the country. No authority or appropriation exists for maps and charts to accompany the compendium in octavo, the copy for which is to-day sent to the Congressional Printer from the Census Office. The expense of illustrating in this style a work of which so large an edition is to be printed as of the compendium, would be very considerable, and I do not feel justified in making a distinct recommendation to that effect, but content myself with suggesting the matter, leaving it to Congress to determine whether the expenditure will be consistent with other calls upon the revenue. I do, however, strongly recommend that a statistical atlas of the United States, based upon the results of the Ninth Census, to contain a large number of maps, with appropriate text and tables, be authorized in an edition not exceeding five thousand, to be prepared under the direction of the Superintendent of the Census, for distribution to public libraries, learned societies, colleges, and academies, with a view to promote that higher kind of political education which has heretofore been so greatly neglected in this country, but toward which the attention of the general public, as well as of instructors and students, is now being turned with the most lively interest. The exact knowledge of our country should be the basis of this education; and it is in the power of Congress, by authorizing such a publication as is here recommended, to practically