NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14402, 22 June 1910, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

TAKING, THE CENSUS iIN AMERICA. [ In the 'American Review ■ of .Review* ■.. the Director of 'the Census gives some account of the' manner\of taking the 1910 census. It was JjegunVon :i^pril ; 15, "arid was to be completed, Ofor/city; and country, ;• by May 15.: i'.f Fully ; 70,000 enumerators are employed, with 33Q ; .' supervqsors; arid some 350.0 odd sche&efles/ with "the : names, owttjations, etc., of the people. : In no other country which regularly takes a census arc there 60 many people to be enumerated as in the United States,; and in no other important census-taking country is the population so scattered. A census is also being taken of mines, ' manufactures, quarries, ;, and farms. The number of people will be established in four -or live months -~from May 15 (probably in October), and all the details will be published in two years. c The number of questions asked has been increased to about 30. Care is being taken to discriminate between the various elements of the United States' highly composite —between, for instance, persons of German, Bohemian, Polish, Croatian, and Magyar origin, all perhaps born in the same countryAustria-Hungary. Care is also being taken to show the number of children born to each marriage and the period in which they were born. In the industrial census, employers, employed, and independent workers are distinguished. Great trouble is also being taken to get accurate farming statistics, which is difficult, for in the States there are not only many farms, but farms of numerous types. I Women seem to be among the enumerators, as well as men. One trouble which has had to be contended against is distrust; of the enumerators, especially among the foreign born, and. fear that the information.supplied may be used as an excuse for heavier taxation, for army service, or for deportation. Consequently the Census Bureau has I had to conduct a campaign of publicity to teach the people better. Without the help of modern tabulating machines such a task as this census could not be completed within : a reasonable time.' The machines used are in principle similar to those used }in 1900, but have been much improved. ; ; There is now, so; much complex tabulation" to be doneas, for instance, to show how many white males, born abroad, "of a given age, are married or how" many coloured persons, born' in the ;■ States, of a , given age, are single. ;■ In order to do this work economically a system of punched cards is'employed;-, one card to each of the 90,000,000 persons. These cards can be punched in any desirable series .: of combinations— mostly done by women; and cards for males are automatically discharged into one compart- j ment, and those for females into another. Three hundred punching machines will be worked, night and day, by two sets of clerks. Even the' characteristics of the population are done by tabulating machines. Other separations (besides those of sex) are done by electrical sorting machines.

THE GULF STREAM. One by one the myths of our childhood are disappearing, but in most cases they die hard. One of the most persistent of -these fables has been dispelled • within the last IS or 14 years by. the labours of Dr. H. N. Dickson, and other hydrographers, thanks to whose untiring efforts it may fairly be said that the North Atlantic is the beet known of all the oceans. 1 The three words with which to conjure in determining the movements of the ocean waters are salinity, temperature, ; and plankton. It will be remembered that plankton is the name given to the tiny organisms that drift about in the sea. It .might almost be said that the temperature of the sea, the amount of saltness of the water, and the types, of plankton ' over every square l foot of the . North Atlantic Ocean were tested, and the results recorded on charts in. those closing years of the century that has passed. Dr. Dickson, for instance, • made" a chemical examination of more than 4000 samples of sea water collected in 1896 and 1897 and his monthly charts give the alterations in salinity during those years. The conclusions drawn from these prolonged researches have been clearly put in some of the more recent textbooks. -For. instance, in Professor Salisbury's "Physiography" we read: "Even if there were no Gulf Stream the climate of North-western Europe would be much more temperate than that of the corresponding latitudes of North America." Or, again, Professor Gregory, in his " Geography: Structural, Physical, and. . Comparative," bluntly states of the famous stream: "It does not reach the shores of Europe. Some of the Gulf Stream water is blown across the Atlantic , by the prevalent winds from the west, but such water travels only as a slow, irregular drift, and its influence is insignificant." What,. then, are the facts as elicited by the hydrographers? The Gulf Stream does flow as a body 'of warm water from the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico, out* through the Straits/of Florida, and'along the United States to Newfoundland. Put it does not " continue as a well-"" defined, rapid stream across the whole of the North Atlantic to the shores of Europe," there to give us a mild, warm climate. Its passage is barred for most of the year by the icy waters coming down from Labrador. ; -

EX-PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. Mr. Sydney: Brooks, :that most indefatigable and voluminous of .writers'on American subjects, discourses upon ex-President Roosevelt in the English.Review. He says we ; ; have to roll half-a-dozen Englishmen together to get Mr. Roosevelt's full measure. On one occasion he wrote to Mr. Roosevelt that a pork butcher could understand him. And Mr. Bfcosevelt gladly admitted it was true. He sums' up as follows: -" Take Mr. F.C.-Selous, the big game-hunter, add Dr. Fitchett, the. semi-historian, 'add again the breeziness -of Lord ■ Charles Beresford, who might be at least half a Roosevelt himself if he were not an Irishman, add again Lord Crayon's instinct for domination and his superb self-confidence, mingle with something more than a dash of Lord Kitchener's remorseless efficiency, throw in at least as much decisiveness, practicality,' and belligerency as Mr. ; Chamberlain has ever- commanded, and, finally, leaven the resultant with an ardour Gladstoriiah in its intensity and you have a combination 'by any means unlike the ex-President. In a phrase, that is already classic, but not yet classical, he announced when he left the White House that he had had ' a perfectly , corking time.' 'Both the sentiment and the language.came straight from the heart.' 'I like being President,' he once said to me with a snap of his emphatic jaw. Thanks ,to him, Americans do not do ' the things; they' did. They do not even think ' the thoughts of a decade ago. ■ He has broadened the 'social conscience of the people ;> he has altered the ■ current : of» their ideas. It j is, "", in ■ the j end, as a sort of whirlwind of purincation that one thinks him." Tn the" World's Work, the editor writes \on the Impending Roosevelt. i« Having known Colonel Roosevelt for nearly/15 years, the editor gives the following description: —'.' A middle-aged, middle-sized figure, struggling against pudginess, simple, boyish,- direct; impulsive for the ; right rand intolerant of ; wrqhg, human to the' core, with" his blind v side; for his I friends ; and 'sleepless v eye for; his enemies—the( a group of gentlemen for I whom ■-, he never has td blush; a . cultured j person without, pedantry 'in his i wisdom? a man of\homilies„ yet; who".■ with all his '■ wisdom is practical; .who has the very heart which forth in a clear J countenance, a happy mixture •- of ■■: the {cheerful : K idiot, a seer: of visions, and " the captain and crew f of. the Nancy : Brig—?a man who :does .the undisputed thing .in , a boyish,, buoyant way» f ■ .■ •■ . • .•-- 5T .'..,.„ ''*•*.*-■ , : .«';■ -'- : . 'i ''■-*■.; ■' *",