The Boy with the U.S. Census

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The Boy With the U.S. Census

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Title: The Boy With the U.S. Census
Author: Francis Rolt-Wheeler
Release Date: August 15, 2004 [EBook #13181]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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[Illustration: THE STATUE OF LIBERTY. The welcome of New York, the gateway of the New World, to all races and peoples of the earth. (_Courtesy of U.S. Immigration Station, Ellis Island._)]

THE BOY WITH THE U.S. CENSUS
BY FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER
[Illustration: The Boy With the U.S. Census]
With Thirty-eight Illustrations, principally from Bureaus of the United States Government
November, 1911

To My Son Roger's Friend
HAMILTON DAY

PREFACE
Life in America to-day is adventurous and thrilling to the core. Border warfare of the most primitive type still is waged in mountain fastnesses, the darkest pages in the annals of crime now are being written, piracy has but changed its scene of operations from the sea to the land, smugglers ply a busy trade, and from their factory prisons a hundred thousand children cry aloud for rescue. The flame of Crusade sweeps over the land and the call for volunteers is abroad.
In hazardous scout duty into these fields of danger the Census Bureau leads. The Census is the sword that shatters secrecy, the key that opens trebly-guarded doors; the Enumerator is vested with the Nation's greatest right--the Right To Know--and on his findings all battle-lines depend. "When through Atlantic and Pacific gateways, Slavic, Italic, and Mongol hordes threaten the persistence of an American America, his is the task to show the absorption of widely diverse peoples, to chronicle the advances of civilization, or point the perils of illiterate and alien-tongue communities. To show how this great Census work is done, to reveal the mysteries its figures half-disclose, to point the paths to heroism in the United States to-day, and to bind closer the kinship between all peoples of the earth who have become "Americans" is the aim and purpose of
THE AUTHOR.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
A BLOOD FEUD IN OLD KENTUCKY
CHAPTER II
RESCUING A LOST RACE
CHAPTER III
A MANUFACTORY OF RIFLES
CHAPTER IV
THE BOY LEADER OF A CRUSADE
CHAPTER V
"DON'T DEPORT MY OLD MOTHER!"
CHAPTER VI
THE NEGRO CENSUS FROM THE SADDLE
CHAPTER VII
HOBOES ON THE TRAMP
CHAPTER VIII
THE CENSUS HEROES OF THE FROZEN NORTH
CHAPTER IX
CONFRONTED WITH THE BLACK HAND
CHAPTER X
RIOTS AROUND A CITY SCHOOL
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Statue of Liberty (_Frontispiece_) Taking the Census in Old Kentucky Kentucky Mountaineer Family Moonshining Bill Wilsh's Home in the Gully Bill Wilsh in the School Alligator-Catching The Census Building Making Gun-sights True "A Bull's-eye Every Time!" Young Boys from the Pit "I 'ain't Seen Daylight for Two Years" Eight Years Old and "Tired of Working" The Biggest Liner in the World Coming in Immigration Station, Ellis Island Where the Workers Come from On a Peanut Farm In an All-Negro Town "'Way down Yonder in de Cotton Fiel'" How Most of the Negroes Live Facsimile of Punched Census Card Tabulating Machine Pin-box and Mercury Cups Over the Trackless Snow with Dog-team The Census in the Aleutian Islands "Can We Make Camp?" To Eskimo Settlements by Reindeer Gathering Cocoanuts Taking the Census in a City Festa in the Italian Quarter The Fighting Men of the Tongs Arrested as the Firing Stops Work for Americans

THE BOY WITH THE U.S. CENSUS
CHAPTER I
A BLOOD FEUD IN OLD KENTUCKY
"Uncle Eli," said Hamilton suddenly, "since I'm going to be a census-taker, I think I'd like to apply for this district."
The old Kentucky mountaineer, who had been steadily working his way through the weekly paper, lowered it so that he could look over the top of the page, and eyed the boy steadfastly.
"What for?" he queried.
"I think I could do it better than almost anybody else in this section," was the ready, if not modest, reply.
"Wa'al, perhaps yo' might," the other assented and took up the paper again. Hamilton waited. He had spent but little time in the mountains but he had learned the value of allowing topics to develop slowly, even though his host was better informed than most of the people in the region. Although not an actual relative, Hamilton always called him "Uncle" because he had fought with distinguished honor in the regiment that Hamilton's father commanded during the Civil War, and the two men ever since had been friends.
"I don't quite see why any one sh'd elect to take a hand in any such doin's unless he has to," the Kentuckian resumed, after a pause; "that census business seems kind of inquisitive some way