Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 34, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 January 1902 — POPULATION OF PHILIPPINES. [ARTICLE]

POPULATION OF PHILIPPINES.

Method of Enumerating the People an Exercise of Mathematics. The census bureau reports with great particularity that the population of ths United States is now 84,233,069, and concludes its statistical summary with ths proud boast that there are but three countries which have a greater population than our own. This assertion would bs true if there had been no expansion beyond our continental area, with its population of 76,000,000, and there is a good deal of guesswork in at least one of the particulars which credits the Philippines with jus.t 6,691,339 inhabitants. Now as ever the method of enumerating the people of those islands is largely through an exercise in pure mathematics. The bureau explains that “a census was in Rrpgress in 1896 when the insurrection broke out,” and that “returns for over two-fifths of the population were found stored at Manila.” Over two-fifths, then, were unaccounted for, and what we have in the census is an estimate based on doubtful and incomplete Spanish figures and faithfully carried out to the unit's place. From time to time the archipelago has been populated and depopulated by the statisticians at an amazing rate. In 1882 one of Spain’s lightning calculators counted 10,426,000 Filipinos without moving from bis desk, the grewsome thought that in assimilating our island wards we must have slaughtered three or four millions of them. But Whitaker’s Almanack, just published, accepts 5,500,000 as the proper figure for 1898, which would seem to show that there had been a remarkable increase while the process of assimilation was going on. Other estimates are: Ecclesiastical census, 1876, 6,173,632; civil census, 1877, 5,561,222; Spanish census, 1887, Christian population, 6,000,000. The figure last named was taken as the basis