NUMBERING THE PEOPLE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19307, 21 April 1926, Page 12

NUMBERING THE PEOPLE

WORK OF COMPILING CENSUS. j I THE TASK IN INSTITUTIONS. MENTAL HOSPITAL AND GAOLS. By this time all or nearly all husbands, hotelkecpcrs, landladies and other heads of "establishments" —as the Government Statistician calls them—will have folded up their census papers and thanked providence that all is over for another five years. All have not found it an easy task. For a d;iv or two past it has been a common thing to see toilers in the lunchhour conning blue and white documents brought from home. Many have been the arguments about this or that point and not a few such disputes have had to be settled by officials at the Chief Post Office. Indeed, there was a steady stream of callers there yesterday. Some wanted information, others were in search of personal schedules which the heads of the establishments had failed to obtain. If anything goes wrong with the census it will not be through indifference on the part of the public. The Absent Householder. Some householders may not receive schedules till to-day, but that should not alarm them. The sub-enumerators have had a hard task in covering their areas. Often a house has been found locked up with all its inmates absent and the. official has had to make repeated calls in the hope of finding someone in. All such a householder has to do is to fill up the forms in such a way as to enumerate the people who passed last night in his house or who arrived to-day without having filled in a census form elsewhere. If the head of an ordinary family finds flip census troublesome let him think of some other people. At the Auckland Mental Hospital the (ask means days of labour. There are about 1100 inmates and for every one «•! them a personal schedule must be made out. Being insane, they are not allowed to handle the forms themselves and all the data is obtained from the hospital records. Fortunately, the authorities supply the papers well ahead of census day. Patients Without Relatives. Personal information about manv mental patients is very meagre. It is estimated that about one-third of them have no relatives known to the officials. Some have been under care of the State for 30 or 40 years and the data obtained on their admission then was but scanty. Of a few. who when committeed were friendless and vagrant, very little, indeed is known. However, the officials make up the forms as fully as they can. Each building in the hospital is a " dwelling " for the purposes of the census, and a separate schedule is made up in respect of it. The enumeration of the staff is no small matter, though married members living out are responsible for their own returns. Work at the Hospital. At the Auckland Hospital patients are asked to fill in their own forms if possible; otherwise it is done at their dictation. The formality was completed some days ago by those patients who were certain to be in hospital over census night and a general clearing-up was made yesterday, and papers for child patients and any too ill to be troubled with such formalities were made up from the admission cards. One odd feature of the. hospital census is that each of the consumptive shelters, being a detached structure, is legally a dwelling, and (he single inhabitant has to fill in two papers, one stating that the outer walls are of wood, that it contains one room, and so forth. The Mount Eden Prison has nearly 400 inhabitants, male and female. Their census papers are made out by the office staff, but each prisoner is required to verify the particulars and sign the declaration provided. A question was raised in yesterday's Herald regarding the intention of question 8 on the householder's dwelling schedule. An interpretation was given by Mr. W. J. Gow. enumerator for Auckland City and Suburbs, but later he telegraphed to Wellington for confirmation. The reply was that '' the number to r>n stated in paragraph 3 is the total number in the dwelling." NATIONALITY QUESTION. REASON FOR ITS OMISSION. [by tjxegraph.—own f;oitßEsro.vi>i::;T. ] WELLINGTON. Tuesday. Asked to-day why n« question relating to nationality appeared on the census paper, the Government Statistician, Mr. Malcolm Fraser, said that several questions had been dropped this year which it was not considered necessary to ask every five years in country like New Zealand, which contained 97 per cent, of British people. There was not sufficient change to make it necessary to ask the question regarding nationality at every census. "I could fill half-a-dozen sheets with questions," said Mr. Eraser, "but what is desired is to obtain the information which will be most beneficial to the people and the country. Tt was thought that the questions regarding unemployment and income grades would be of more importance in view of the proposal to assist those with large families. Questions asked this year will tie substituted by others when the next census is taken, until all the information desired is obtained. It was therefore decided to drop the questions regarding nationality and tho father's birthplace from the present census paper. As a matter of fact, fewer questions are asked this year though there appear to be more."