Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 98, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 August 1909 — Census-Taking Out of Politics. [ARTICLE]

Census-Taking Out of Politics.

President Taft, has served notice that those assisting the enumerators in taking the census are to be selected with a view only to their competency and once selected they are to stay on the job and do nothing else but take census.

Any mixing in politics, the president declares,) means not only dismissal of the employe but trouble for the supervisor who is to be held responsible for the man working under him in his district.

The president’s order which politically binfiS and gags the census employes is as follows: In giving his order as to how he wants the census conducted, President Taft says:

“The taking of the census involves the appointment of some three hundred supervisors, who, in turn, are to appoint many times that number cf enumerators. The supervisors are given complete discretion in the selection of enumerators, respectively, to act under them. The success of the census will depend upon the efficiency and strict attention to duty cf the supervisors and upon the intelligence of the enumerators and their faithful application to the business in hand.

“Generally, there is a supervisor for each congressional district. It has been found to be the quickest and best means of selecting suitable supervisors to consult the congressmen and senators as to competent condldates for their respective districts and states.

“This system can easily be perverted to political purposes If the supervisors are not forbidden to use it as an instrument for influencing local and general elections and primaries in the interest of particular candidates or parties. It is not an unseasonable requirement that any one who accepts an appointment as supervisor or as enumerator shall, during the term of his employment and service, avoid an active purpose in politics. r

"I therefore order that in the preparation of regulations for the taking of the census, you and the director of the census embody therein a provision that any supervisor or enumerator who uses his influence with his subordinates or colleagues to assist any party, or any candidate In a primary or general election, or who takes any part, other than merely casting his vote, in politics, national, state or local, either by service upon a political committee, by public address, by the solicitation of votes, or otherwise, shall at once be dismissed

from the service. “I wish to make this regulation as broad as possible, and wjsh it enforced without exception. It is of the highest importance that the census should be taken by men having only the single purpose of reaching a just and right result, and that the large amount of money to be expended in the improvement of so vast a machine as the census shall not be made to serve the political purposes of any one.”