THE CENSUS.
The Registrar-General has issued a circular with regard to" the taking cf the census ;on the 31st prox. The. preli'iniiiary statements of the population of counties, boroughs and electorates ivill be made up by the local enumerators, but the full compilation will be done in tlie Registrar-General's office. When the exact number of people in each division of the colony has been arrived at, a. certificate will be given to the Commlis&ioners under the Representation Act, with the particulars for each of the numerous small blocks into which the division-1 was .subdivided to facilitate the taking of the census. These particulars are to enable the new electorates to be defined on a population basis. The information as to age, occupation, etc., will be comniled^tt£^ervr ards on what is known as the cards? l gWßSff« t A printed card is marked to indicate the particulars for each person, and -the' cards are afterwards sorted according to the information required, and counted. This system is now always used for all statistics whefe many and elaborate combinations are required! The Hollerith electrical machine for punching, sorting and counting the cards, used in the United States, has been tested and' found unsatisfactory, and the cards will accordingly be sorted' by hand. The census is not only “ the great measuring rod of a country's progress/"” but it is also the only mode of ascertaining the
internal movement of the population/ Particulars as to age, marriages, occupation, etc., are of considerable iimportance for various purposes,-and these can only be obtained with any certainty by means of a. census. It is curious to note that while there is now a penalty for withholding the required information from the census officials, one of the principal opponents of tbe original proposal, in 1753, to take the first census in England, stated in the House of Commons that “he had not believed any men would have been so presumptuous and abandoned as to make such a proposal.”
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Bibliographic details
New Zealand Mail, Issue 1511, 14 February 1901, Page 63
Word Count
329THE CENSUS. New Zealand Mail, Issue 1511, 14 February 1901, Page 63
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