uare root of the yards of cloth
in a suit multiplied by the square root of the number of stitches taken
to make the suit will give the length of the thread used. In its
practical working in 1860 the result was to give to one assistant
marshal a per diem of $1.66 and to another $31.32 for the same labor. A
proposition which works out such a result may serve for a joke in negro
minstrelsy: it will hardly be accepted as honest figuring by the
recipient of the minimum pay.

But the greatest objection of all is to the schedules created by the law
of 1850. The number of inquiries is limited by that law to one hundred,
though why that number should be selected as the limit, except at
haphazard, is a mystery. It is purely arbitrary, and in its practical
working is mischievous. Statistical inquiries ought to be exhaustive,
whether the questions asked are ten or ten thousand. To limit the number
to one hundred requires the lumping together of incongruous facts or
the entire omission of some of prime importance. Of what real value is
the answer to the question, "Kind of motive-power?" in relation to
manufactures unless other details are given? Yet only such questions can
be asked where the margin is so narrow. In the census of Massachusetts
for 1875, 304 inquiries were made, embracing 1337 topics; and so
satisfactorily was the work done that out of a population of 1,651,912
only 43 persons were unaccounted for when the statistics of occupations
were compiled; while in the United States census of 1870 the number thus
unaccounted for exceeded 1,000,000. In Rhode Island no less than 561
inquiries were made in the census of 1875, and the result is the most
complete census--not merely of persons, but of every kind of manufacture
and production--yet taken in any State. The returns of cotton, woollen
and iron manufactures show what can and ought to be done in that
direction for the whole nation in 1880. They answer the requirements set
forth by the superintendent of the census of 1870 by presenting "tables
so full of technical information as to become the handbook of
manufacturers."

By the side of the census reports for 1875 of Massachusetts and Rhode
Island, and even of the young State of Iowa, those of the United States
hitherto published appear like incomplete, vague and childish efforts.
For instance, in the census of Massachusetts for 1875, in the
agricultural statistics, 140 different items are reported, exclusive of
10 included