DOMINION CENSUS.

Taranaki Daily News, 9 April 1921, Page 6

DOMINION CENSUS.

FACILITATING THE TASK. MECHANICAL COUNTERS - . There will be between 250,000 and 300,000 schedules for compilation by the Census and Statistics Office after the census of April 17, and an interesting account has been published by the Wellington Evening Post of the methods by which the work will be done. As to each person the schedules will specify name, relation to head of household, sex, age, conjugal condition or orphanhood, marriage and issue (of married women), profession or occupation, birthplace, and nation of allegiance, race, length of residence in the Dominion, country of father’s birth, religion, degree of education, and amount of life insurance. To these are added, on each schedule, particulars as to the size, material, and method of occupation of the dwelling, anddhe number of poultry and hives of bees kept; the number of children under 16 years of age, dependent on the head of the household. There is altogether an enormous mass of detail, offering almost unlimited scope for the compilation of tables and statements showing any one detail in combination with any other. NAMES NOT PRESERVED. The accuracy of the census statistics lies not with the Census Office, but with individual who fills up the schedule; if the schedules are filled correctly the results shown by the tables will be true. The original schedules are very clumsy papers to handle, and the first step the Census Office staff takes is to reduce their contents to a more manageable form, by recording the particulars for each person on a separate card. This, by the way, cannot be identified in any way with the person concerned. It' bears no name or address, and the original schedules are promptly destroyed. The census, though it does in the first place take' the names, is concerned only with numbers, and does not preserve any records in respect of individuals.

Even when the bulky schedules are replaced by handy cards, the work of sorting by hand for any required classification is a tremendous undertaking, and requires a very large staff. Moreover, once the census is finished, there isMittle chance of making a fresh scrutiny to arrive at some new tabulation, because of the amount of work involved. Yet this hand-sorting has hitherto been the only system in New Zealand and many other countries. America led the way many years ago in adopting a mechanical method of sorting, and machines have been used for iome time in England. A sorting machine will be used in New Zealand for the first time in connection with the present census, will be able to do in a few days work which would occupy a large staff for many weeks or months. SORTING OF PUNCHED CARDS. • The cards to be used for the New Zealand census measure 7£in long and 3£in from top to bottom. Nothing will be written on them; they" will be punched with holes of which the significance is their position on the card. The punching is done by means of special machines and carefully checked. The importance of the punched card lies in its permanence, its infallibility, and its readiness for further inquiry. Once the full set of perforated cards is in the Census Office, it is always available for further ,use; and a new inquiry can always be instituted so long as the particulars concerned are within the scope of the census inquiry. The sorting machine will give the required answer with a minimum of work, involving no inspection whatever of the §ards, and in a day or two.

To extract from the million or so of cards - the number of people answering to any given set of qualities, the sorting and counting machine is called into service. It consists of a series of plungers which can be set very quickly for any desired compilation. The teachine is driven by an electric motor, and the cards are placed in .a hopper and automatically fed into the machine at the rate of approximately 350 per minute. By the action of the plungers the cards are sorted into their .respective classifications, while the numbers are at the same time counted. Thus to tabulate the conjugal condition of those over 16 and the orphanhood of those under 16, the machine will sort the cards by a single operation into thfcir respective compartments as “never married,” “married,” “widowed,” “divorced,” both parents living,” “father dead,” “mother dead,” or “both parents dead,” and all that would be necessary would be to read off the counter for each compartment to ascertain the numbers for each group. This could be done for either a sub-division of the country such as a county or borough, or for the Dominion as a whole. •

' There are in the complete plant three machines —the puncher, the sorter and counter, and the tabulator. The sorter and counter gives the numbers corresponding to any selected factor, or factors; the tabulator sets these out formally on paper.