Revelations of the Census

In the year 1870, the ninth enumeration or census of the inhabitants of the United States and their productions, was begun; but it was not completed until late in the next year. The revelations of that census concerning the growth of our country in population, development of its resources and its various industries, was wonderful. It shows the remarkable fact that the inhabitants of this comparatively young country with its immense out-of-doors, are not even now, in their youth, a pre-eminently agricultural people. When the first enumeration was taken in the year 1790, and the population was about four million, the value of the annual products of our agriculture was reported at $150,000,000. That of our manufactures was then quite small. The assessed wealth of the people then was estimated at $497,293,000. Sixty years after that enumeration (1850), the value of the annual products of agriculture was given at $1,70,000,000, and of manufactures at $1,019,000,000 and the assessed wealth at $2,276,000,000. Our population then was little more than twenty-three million. Twenty years later, or at our last national enumeration (1870), when our population was almost forty million, the value of the annual agricultural products, including that of the farms, orchards, forests, buildings and live-stock, was estimated at almost $3,000,000,000. At the same time the value of the annual product of our manufactures was estimated at $4,232,325,000, or $1,232,325,000, more than the total value of the agricultural products of our country. This shows an increase in the value of the products of our manufactures, in the last twenty years, of over three hundred per cent.

After this enumeration of the inhabitants, and the final restoration of the Union, in May, 1872, a new apportionment in representation was established, making the ratio one hundred and thirty-seven thousand, instead of ninety thousand. A new Pension bill was also adopted, giving eight dollars a month to all surviving officers, enlisted men, and volunteers in the wars of the Revolution and of 1812, or their surviving widows. To these recipients of pensions, and those of the late Civil War, our Government is now paying nearly $30,000,000 a year.