Census 2010

This month I am stiff, with a stitch in my side from trudging through the snow—the beautiful stuff of last month’s column.

This week I started a job as an enumerator for the 2010 census. In short, “a counter of the people” and “all the places they live or stay or could live or stay.”

My qualifications for this job are suspect, since I am terrible at reading maps and have had a life-long confusion over the basic directions of right and left. But here I am. I can learn.

The first day I spent traveling some of the lower reaches of French Woods, NY, deciphering a soup of acronyms and code numbers typical of the federal government. But I also got to use the snowshoes my cousin lent me, and it was kind of amazing to be skimming along the top of the thigh deep snow.

Few people were home. The summer cabins are shuttered tight with stacks of firewood under the eves. The eves were hung with twisted wind chimes. There were chickadees and juncos. One side-hill house had the laugh-out-loud, Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz sign “I’d Turn Back If I Were You.” Good advice, but not taken, as usual.

Other houses were alive with footprints and scattered bird seed, smoke and barking dogs.

So we’ll see how it goes. I’ve done many jobs from dishwasher to newspaper reporter, hay pitcher, factory worker, waitress, nurse and art class model. This morning when I walked out to warm up my car, my husband had left a funny message drawn in the snow on the window. It said “Fed.”

The U.S. Constitution requires a census of population and housing to be taken every 10 years. This year’s decennial census will be the 23rd in our nation’s history.

Our first census, taken in 1790, was supervised by U.S. marshals under the direction of Thomas Jefferson. It took 18 months to complete. The tally was about 3,900,000 people in the original 13 states and the districts of Kentucky, Maine, Vermont and the Southwest Territory, now known as Tennessee.

By 1880, Congress had replaced the marshals with a staff of enumerators and more detailed information was gathered. However, tabulation of results was completed only a few months before the 1890 census was to begin.

The 1890 census was the first to use mechanical tabulators with punch cards, which sped up the counting process dramatically. The machine’s inventor, Herman Hollerith, later founded IBM.

In 1902, the Bureau of the Census was established and in 1913 it was included in the Department of Commerce.

As we are instructed in enumerator training to tell people, the primary reason for taking the census is to determine the number of seats each state is entitled to in the House of Representatives. It is also used to determine the distribution of federal and state monies and in creating local districts for schools and elections.

The 2010 census will only use “short form” questionnaires because permanent census bureau offices conduct on-going surveys on a wide range of topics like employment and income.

It is an enormous undertaking. When you get your form fill it out and mail it back. Be counted.

- Kristin Barron