CENSUS NEXT YEAR

Northern Advocate, 15 August 1935, Page 9

CENSUS NEXT YEAR

EXTENSIVE ARRANGEMENT QUESTIONS TO BE ANSWERED BIG ORGANISATION NECESSARY Extensive arrangements are now in hand for the Dominion census to be taken on April 28, 1936, when the citizenry will be asked just- who, what and possibly why, they are. The process is interesting. Census and statistics officials in the assistance of every other Government Department to facilitate the collection of returns. * For .instance, the IVlarine Department helps by taking papers to lighthousekeepers; field inspectors of the Agriculture Department are pressed into service when making their rounds of out-back properties; and the Police Department and the Post and Telegraph Department 'all dio their share in arriving at a correct national tally. The most valued cogs in the census wheel are the postmen, who possess a detailed local knowledge. If one woman seems loath to give the required information, her neighbour will goon supply the missing facts in the course of a chat about the weather. Residents in out-of-the-way places are reached by devious methods. In the Marlborough Sounds motor launches will be used, covering many miles of beautiful waterways. When men lived on the Campbell .Islands, whalers were looked to provide communication with the Census Department when they were on their way to and from the frozen south. The department, by the way, was interested recently in a proposal for two or three men to go to the Kermandec Islands. Drafting : Operation. Altogether, between 1300 and 1400 men, mostly Government officials, will be used in the big round-up, and the first papers will be sent away within the next two months—to the Cook Islands. When the distribution and collection of the papers has been completed, there will come the gigantic task of drafting the New Zealand subjects of the King into their right pens. Once this has been accomplished, officials will be able to show, ini neat, tabulated form, how many, which, what and where from. A considerable amount of interpretation for Maoris is involved, including such terms as “taraiwamotuka-” (cardriver) . Filling in the correct occupation of their children has been a bugbear to many Maoris in past years. To themselves they have put the question: “Occupation?—Him, eat, drink, sleep,” and down goes the answer in that form. With each census return an old newspaper joke has bobbed up concerning the man who, puzzled about the length of his residence in New Zealand, has taken extreme pains to measure his house. Ten years ago the Census Department agreed to assist the Agriculture Department by including questions about poultry and bee-keeping. There were some facetious replies, some citizens seizing on the opportunity of informing the department that they wrote poetry and kept grasshoppers. Amazing Returns. An amazing return was sent in by a Maori, who included 17 pages of genealogy, and there are citizens who spent any amount of time and trouble in filling in part of the paper in Old English letters, something after the style of an illuminated address. The first New ’Zealand census was taken when the country was divided into three provinces—New Ulster, New Munster and New Leinster —a separate census being taken in each province. Generally speaking,. New. Zealanders fill in their papers conscientiously and without including irrelevant matter, but some have been known to compile a treatise on religion, and request that it should be regarded as a model for the spiritual conversion of the officers. A particularly interesting result of the work will be carried out next year when the centre of population is fixed. The last centre of population was an imaginary spot in the north of the South Island. In the last ten years it may have crossed Cook Strait in a northern tendency that has been observed since. 1881.