Growing Up with the Country

They traveled by foot, boat and horseback through 18 states, districts, and territories that stretched from Maine to Georgia, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi River. Armed with their own quill pens, the 650 census takers of 1790 spent 18 months counting the American people. The total: 3,929,214. President George Washington, however suspected an undercount. In a letter to Gouverneur Morris, then U.S. Commissioner to Great Britain, Washington worried about the "indolence of the mass, and want of activity" by many census takers. Proof of this thesis: Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who was in charge of the tally, had to sign his own name to the list of citizens posted in Philadelphia.

The 1790 survey asked only six questions of each head of household: name, the numbers of free white males 16 and older, free white males under 16, free white females, other free persons, and slaves. Faced with the prospect of war with Britain, Congress decided to add questions to the 1810 census to measure the country's industrial strength. The alien question surfaced in 1820, when the respondent was asked whether he was a "foreigner not naturalized."

Questions proliferated at such a rate that by 1890 some people had to reply to as many as 470 queries. Were ther any "idiots" in the family? If so, were their heads larger or smaller than average? Wisdom prevailed and those obnoxious questions were dropped in 1900. The biggest uproar came in 1940 when the census asked about income for the first time.

As the nation grew, the census marked the changes in American life. For example, the 1920 survey showed that, for the first time, more people were living in urban areas than in the countryside. Despite the shifting population, states were slow to reallocate congressional seats so that each district would have the same average population. The 1960 census dramatically revealed the failing: Georgia's rural Ninth District, for example, had a population of 272,154, while the urban Fifth had 823,680. These figures provided a factual basis for the "one man, one vote" decisions in 1963 and 1964 by the U.S. Supreme Court. They changed congressional and state districting --and the fate of the politicians--across the country.

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