Taking the 1930 Census of Population

12 Annual Report, 1927, p. 2; Joseph A. Hill, "Progress of Work in the Census Bureau," pp. 510 - 512.

13 Leon E. Truesdell, "The Census of Population," Journal of the American Statistical Association, 25, Supplement (March 1930): 113-116; Annual Report, 1929, pp. 4-7.

14 A special unemployment questionnaire was administered to individuals who usually worked but were reported as not at work in the census.

15 Truesdell, "The Census of Population," pp. 113-114.

16 U.S. Census Bureau, "Why the Radio Question Was Included in the Census," n.d., Entry 215, box 232, RG 29, NAB.

17 W. M. Steuart, "Value of Census Figures Greatly Improved," n.d., Entry 215, box 233, RG 29, NAB.

18 Strong Cigar, "Be Ready for Census Man," The News and Courier (Charleston, SC), Mar. 21, 1930.

19 Truesdell, "The Census of Population," p. 114.

20 Annual Report, 1930, p. 2; [Joseph A. Hill], "Publicity: Tentative outline, November 26, 1928," Entry 215, box 232, RG 29, NAB.

21 Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930: Population (1931), vol. 1, p. 2. Although the Philippine Islands were a territory of the United States, they were not included in the 1930 census. The commonwealth statistical office sponsored a Philippine census in 1939. In addition to a canvass of the population, the 1930 census collected data on agriculture, irrigation, drainage, manufactures, mines, distribution or trade, construction, and unemployment.

22 Annual Report, 1930, p. 10.

23 Annual Report, 1929, pp. 3 - 4.

24 Ibid.; Annual Report, 1930, pp. 4 - 5.

25 Annual Report, 1930, p. 5.

26 Ibid., pp. 7 - 8; Joseph A. Hill, "Progress of Work in the Census Bureau," Journal of the American Statistical Association (March 1929): 1. Since at least 1880, the suggestion has been made that letter carriers should take the census. Legal changes allowed some letter carriers to be employed as enumerators in the 1930 census, but the experience was not a good one. For one thing, letter carriers had another job— delivering the mail. Completing census forms took time away from mail delivery. In Washington, DC, individual questionnaires were used instead of the large, 100-person forms. The information then had to be recopied onto the large forms, increasing the cost of the operation and the likelihood of copying errors. Despite the 1930 experiment, support for using letter carriers to collect census data continued. At the request of Congress, the Census Bureau and the U.S. Postal Service looked into this possibility early in the planning for Census 2000. In a joint letter report, the two agencies agreed that letter carriers did not know their postal customers well enough to complete their census forms, mail delivery would suffer, the cost of delivering census questionnaires would increase due to the higher wages and benefits of letter carriers, and legal changes would be required to allow postal employees to collect individual address information. See Samuel Green, Jr. (for the U.S. Postal Service) and Harry A. Scarr (for the U.S. Census Bureau), Letter of transmittal: USPS-Census Cooperation in Planning for the 2000 Decennial Census of Population and Housing. Nov. 5, 1993.

27 Annual Report, 1930, p. 7.

28 Ibid., p. 6.

29 The Butte Daily Post, Apr. 24, 1930.

30 Annual Report, 1930, p. 8.

31 Ibid., pp. 3, 8. The Census Bureau issued a press release on August 8, 1930, giving the preliminary population count of the United States as 122,698,190 (just under 77,000 below the official count of 122,775,046). See Annual Report, 1931, pp. 6-7. The release of preliminary counts was intended to allow for complaints to be investigated before the completed schedules were shipped to Washington and while enumerators remained on the payroll.

32 Fred. W. Swanton to Bailey, May 5, 1930, Entry 215, box 231, RG 29, NAB.

33 Annual Report, 1931, p. 1.

34 Robert P. Lamont, presentation at the seventeenth community meeting on the forthcoming Census of Manufactures and Distribution, Boston, MA, Jan. 4, 1930, Entry 215, box 232, RG 29, NAB.

35 Annual Report, 1931, pp. 5-6; Annual Report, 1932, p. 12. Another 150 million cards were punched in order to tabulate the other censuses taken concurrently with the population census.

36 Because of the addition of relays to the tabulating machines, many combinations of characteristics could be obtained without first sorting the cards. See, Leon E. Truesdell, "The Mechanics of the Tabulation of the Population Census," Journal of the American Statistical Association, 30 (March 1935): 93.

37 Robert P. Lamont, presentation at the seventeenth community meeting on the forthcoming Census of Manufactures and Distribution, Boston, MA, Jan. 4, 1930, Entry 215, box 232, RG 29, NAB.

38 U.S. Bureau of the Census, The Indian Population of the United States and Alaska (1937).

39 Leon E. Truesdell, "Growth of Urban Population in the United States of America," paper presented and the Population Congress of the International Union for the Scientific Investigation of Population Problems, Paris, July 1937.

40 Anderson, The American Census, p. 157.

41 See Edwin D. Goldfield, "Innovations in the Decennial Census of Population and Housing: 1940-1990," commissioned paper prepared for The Year 2000 Census Panel Studies, Committee on National Statistics, National Research Council, August 1992.

42 Goldfield, "Innovations in the Decennial Census," p. 25; Anderson, The American Census, p. 186; Robert Jenkins, 1940 Census of Population and Housing: Procedural History (1983), pp. 23, 38-39.

43 Goldfield, "Innovations in the Decennial Census," p. 19; Anderson, The American Census, pp. 182-186.

44 Those with incomes above five thousand dollars were instructed to write "more than $5,000."

45 Anderson, The American Census, p. 188.

46 Daniel O. Price, "A Check on Underenumeration in the 1940 Census," American Sociological Review, 12 (February 1947): 44 - 49.




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