Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 56, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 March 1899 — THE CENSUS OF 1900, [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE CENSUS OF 1900,

It Will Be Taken Under Different Auspices from Any Other. The taking of the census of 1900 is more than a year in the future, yet the matter attracts more than usual interest. This may.be due in part to the fact that that census will be taken under different auspices from any other, the act just passed establishing a Census Bureau as a permanent part of the machinery of the government. The taking of the census under the new law creates the office of director of the census, and to that office the President has appointed ex-Governor William R. Merriam, of Minnesota, with Dr. Frederick H. Wines, of Illinois, as assistant director. Governor Merriam has more patronage at his disposal than the President of the United States. He has under the law the appointment of more than 54,000 public employes, as follows: Fifty thousand enumerators of the census at graded pay. Three hundred supervisors, salary SI,OOO each or more. Five chief statisticians, salary $3,000 each. One chief clerk, one disbursing clerk, one geographer, salary $2,500 each. Five experts chiefs of division and two stenographers, salary $2,000 each. Ten clerks of class four, salary $1,700. Fifteen clerks of class three, salary $1,500. Twenty clerks of class two, salary sl,300. Three thousand clerks of class one, and clerks, copyists, computers and skilled laborers, with salaries of from S6OO to sl,000 each. One captain of the watch, salary SB4O. Two messengers and forty assistant messengers, watchmen and laborers, at

S6OO each; messenger boys at S4OO each, and charwomen at $240 each. It has been given out that the next or twelfth census will not be so ambitious in its scope as the two which have preceded. A census, the printing of which extends nearly through the succeeding decade, can be of no use except to make work for the government printing establishment. The law provides that the bureau, after the preparation of the figures of population, agriculture, manufactures and mortality, may collect statistics relative to insanity, crime, pauperism, public indebtedness, public expenditures, taxation, transportation, telegraph and telephone business and street railways, which shall be special reports.

WILLIAM B. MERRIAM.