STATISTICS OF EDUCATION.

It is the purpose of this office to secure a full statement of the financial condition of our public-school system, which has a direct value to the tax-payer. The finances of private and parochial schools are intricate and of more remote public importance, and it is not deemed practi cable to spend the time and money that would be needed to secure even an imperfect showing of the finances of such schools.

An attempt will be made, however, to obtain to the fullest possible degree a showing of the forces engaged in education in the great groups of public, private, and parochial schools, and a showing of the pupils and students taught by their combined effort.

Tables are to be prepared showing, as far as possible, the local conditions of each class.

A feature of the census will be the enumeration of pupils under occupations, from which columns or tables will be prepared showing who attended school, as reported by the patrons.

The public-school system is adjusted to a plan of reports to such an extent that the difficulties of approximating a correct showing are less than in the case of parochial schools. The parochial schools, however, are under a system of control that enables something to be done in grouping the total effectiveness. The most serious difficulty is anticipated in securing complete returns of private schools, many of which are transient and isolated in their existence and without any identity with any general system of records.

The accuracy of summaries upon this class of schools, often of small value singly but of considerable worth when aggregated, must be greatly determined by the interest of those who know the schools.

CHURCH STATISTICS.

The special inquiry relating to church statistics has been placed in the hands of Dr. Henry K. Carroll, who for many years has been a leading authority in the country on this subject. The scope of the inquiry will be limited to-I, organizations or societies; II, church edifices; III, seating capacity; IV, value of church property, and, V, communicants. The Census Office believes earlier and more satisfactory results will be secured by limiting questions to the above mentioned subjects. After deliberation it was decided that it would be unwise to attempt to include in the enumerators' schedule inquiries relating to churches, and the office will therefore depend upon special agents and the various denominations themselves for sources of information. Nearly all these denominations report annually full and accurate statistics covering three out of the five questions proposed. The other facts will be secured by the aid of schedules sent from this office to special agents. An appeal has been made through the newspapers of the country to religious denominations, and the interest manifested in this work would indicate that the bureau will secure complete replies to the five questions referred to above.

LIBRARIES.

The subject of libraries is very fully and minutely treated year py year by the Bureau of Education, and it is not clear that in the brief time that could be devoted to the subject under the census results could be reached more ample than those already secured,

PAUPERISM AND CRIME.

Mr. Frederick H. Wines, who has been for more than twenty years secretary of the Illinois State Board of Public Charities, and who had charge in the last census of the statistics relating to the defective, dependent, and delinquent classes, embodied in the 21st volume of the Census Reports for 1880, will collect the statistics of crime and pauperism. The plan submitted by him has been approved by the Superintendent. With reference to crime, it includes a survey of the machinery (1) of arrest, namely, the police and the constabulary; (2) of conviction, namely, courts having criminal jurisdiction; (3) of incarceration (the main branch of the inquiry), or the prison and the prisoner; (4) of release from prison. Under this last head Mr. Wines will discuss mortality in prisons, pardons, paroles, and State or private agencies for the aid of discharged prisoners. Together with the prisons, the institutions for the custody and reformation of juvenile delinquents will be considered. It is believed that the officers in charge of penal and reformatory institutions will take sufficient interest in the inquiry to furnish to the Census Office complete information respecting the inmates of these institutions on the 1st of January, 1890, and, if not disappointed in this expectation, the work of tabulating the general results can be pushed in advance of the taking of the census (June 1, 1890), so that it is his hope and intention to give them to the public during the summer of 1890. Concerning pauperism, the report to be prepared will deal with its total cost and with paupers supported in almshouses, but not with out-door paupers, who can not be found by the enumerators, nor their number and location ascertained by any other practicable method. Since much of the relief given to the poor is by private charity, a census will be made of private benevolent institutions of all descriptions for children, the aged, the homeless and destitute, etc., and of their inmates.

VETERANS OF THE WAR OF THE REBELLION.

Section 17 of the census law provides, among other things

That said Superintendent shall, under the authority of the Secretary of the Interior, cause to be taken, on a special schedule of inquiry, according to such form as he may prescribe, the names, organizations, and length of service of those who had served in the Army, Navy, or Marine Corps of the United States in the war of the rebellion, and who are survivors at the time of said inquiry, and the widows of soldiers, sailors, or marines.

Under this provision, as will be seen, a special inquiry is contemplated While this matter has not been definitely determined upon, a schedule embracing the facts called for will probably be prepared, which will include questions in relation to the name, organization or organizations, date of enlistment, date of termination of enlistment (and there may be two or more enlistments and in more than one organization), length of service (in months), and disability incurred. An interesting feature in connection with this special inquiry is the number of volumes required to make the report. The results will fill eight quarto volumes of a thousand pages each, the size of the population volume of the Tenth Census.

WEALTH, DEBT, AND TAXATION.

The report on valuation, taxation, and public indebtedness in the United States, compiled for the Tenth Census under the direction of the present Superintendent of Census, was in advance of anything ever

attempted before by the National Government. At the same time this report fell far short of the ideal which the compiler had hoped to attain. In the published record of investigations, forming Volume VII of the Tenth Census reports, an official statement was made for the first time of the assessed valuation of real estate and personal property in counties, cities, towns, and other minor civil divisions, and the State, county, city, and town taxation for schools and other purposes was also shown in the same detail. Another important feature, not previously included, was the presentation of tabular exhibits showing the bonded debt, floating debt, gross debt, sinking fund, and net debt of counties, townships, boroughs, cities, towns, villages, and school districts.

A complete statement of local affairs throughout the States and Territories for the Eleventh Census can not be made without dealing extensively with the question of local finance. This is now being done in the wealth, debt, and taxation division, under the superintendence of Mr. T. Campbell-Copeland.

Within the twelve months now ensuing a series of comprehensive tables giving the assessed valuation and taxation in all counties and other minor civil divisions for 1889-'90 will be ready for issue. Above the figures for those years will appear those of 1879-'80, for ready ref erence. The bonded debt, floating debt, sinking fund, and other resources of all minor civil divisions will be stated in such a manner as to show the financial condition of every county, city, town, and village at the end of each fiscal year since 1880.

The assessed valuation and financial condition of counties in 1889-'90, as compared with 1880, will be given separately by counties and by States. The assessed valuation, taxation, and financial condition of States in 1889-90, as compared with 1880, 1870, 1860, and 1850, will be exhibited alphabetically and in geographical groups.

A confusing diversity of systems now existing in the management of municipal financial affairs has been prominently brought to notice in various quarters during the past few years. The general public can find nothing reliable to inform them on the subject. There is and always has been an impression that similar methods of adjusting corporate accounts exist in all cities and large towns. As a matter of fact, outside of statutory provisions, no two cities are exactly alike. These provisions, too, vary in every State and Territory. So it is also in the general administration of local government considered apart from finance.

To deal effectively with finances, securing at least uniform classification of receipts and expenditures for general information, two schednies are now being prepared, after mature deliberation and consultation personally or by letter with several eminent statisticians, including Professor Richard T. Ely, Herbert B. Adams, and Henry B. Gardner, Messrs. David T. Wells, Albion W. Tourgee, William O. Cole, Edward Atkinson, James M. Bugbee, and others.

In 1880 a table of receipts of cities of 7,500 population and over showed cash balance, liquor licenses, proceeds of bonds sold, sinking fund, temporary loans, taxes, water rents, and receipts from other sources for that year only. In the report for 1890 of the wealth, debt, and taxation division will be given in the table of receipts all sources of revenue in cities and large towns of 5,000 population and over for every year since 1880. These will include balance on hand; real, personal, poll or registry, and other taxes; beer, tobacco, trade, professional, and other licenses; railway and other franchises; street, sewer, sidewalk, and other assessments; fines for drunkenness and other

fines, penalties, and forfeitures; rents, net profits of markets, net profits of wharves, profits from water, and other commercial enterprises; income from productive investments; income from public institutions, including jails and prisons; income from the State for schools and other purposes; interest on deposits; other regular sources of income, miscellaneous, and total ordinary receipts. The receipts will also be shown from temporary and bonded loans, sinking fund, special fund, water, other commercial undertakings, markets, and wharves. A sinking-fund statement of receipts will include amount of funds at the beginning of each year since 1880, interest on investments, investments paid off, city treasury, and amount and description of sinking-fund receipts from other sources.

In this schedule of receipts will be included also the available city assets at the end of each year since 1880, embracing cash in treasury, sinking funds, salable land and buildings, taxes and assessments in arrear; other debts due, if regarded as collectible; other available assets, and total. The non-available assets will show water-works, gas-works, school-houses, public buildings, parks, other assets not available, and total.

The schedule of expenditures referred to in a previous paragraph is being similarly arranged, with columns for items of expenditure to correspond with items of receipt, as given above. In the matter of securing full particulars of local government, apart from finance, a comprehensive series of interrogatories is now being completed, which will, it is believed, cover the entire ground.

So far as public indebtedness was concerned the report of the Tenth Census was satisfactory, and the only changes contemplated for the Eleventh Census will be a report of the State, county, and municipal indebtedness of the country for each year of the decade ending in 1890. The history of the national debt and of the several State debts printed in 1880 will stand for all time, and all that will be necessary now is to bring down the facts to 1890. That part of the report relating to local and municipal taxation was imperfect, while the estimates in relation to the true valuation of property, though ahead of anything prior to the Tenth Census, were far from satisfactory. Every effort has been made this year to remedy all the faults and supply the shortcomings of the report of 1880.

The division of wealth, debt, and taxation is now well advanced in its work, and results for the nine years ending in 1889 will be published next summer.

The difficulties to be overcome in this division are general want of classification, lack of clear statements as to sources of receipts and purposes of expenditures, inclusion among ordinary receipts and expenditures of items which do not properly belong thereto, the innumerable errors which arise from the sinking funds, temporary loans, and indeed all the complications and perplexities which come from an attempt to force the accounts of 130,000 debt-creating and taxing minor civil divisions of forty-two sovereign States into one iron-clad mold for the purpose of making a uniform and compact presentation of the entire State and local finance of the nation.

The task of compiling the statistics of national and State finance has been committed to Mr. J. K. Upton, whose many years' experience in the Treasury Department amply qualify him for the work.

RECORDED INDEBTEDNESS.

The clause in the law relating to recorded indebtedness has opened an entirely new field of inquiry and a problem as to methods without precedent in census work.

The manifest and manifold difficulties in arriving at the debt represented by the apparent debt as it appears on the face of the public records of the country are, at first thought, almost insurmountable. Furthermore, the cost of such an investigation, if pursued by the direct method of searching all records and canvassing the parties to whom they relate, would doubtless be greatly in excess of any sum contemplated by Congress in making its appropriations. Indeed, a rough estimate by the Superintendent of Census would indicate that if this method were pursued and the actual recorded indebtedness of private corporations and individuals ascertained it would cost a sum nearly equivalent to the entire amount appropriated for census purposes. Under these circumstances, some preliminary and local inquiries have been instituted in the States of Illinois, Iowa, New York, and Massachusetts, and within a short time the results of this investigation will be given to the public in a census bulletin.

The investigation in the States of Illinois and Iowa has been conducted on parallel lines, and contemplates a study of the actual conditions governing the execution, registry, and discharge of mortgages in those States. A trial transcript has also been made in one county of each State of all mortgages uncanceled of record within a period of twenty years in Illinois and ten years in Iowa for the purpose of arriving, first, at the apparent total debt, and subsequently, by a personal canvass of the parties to those mortgages, at the actual debt; that is, the face of the records less the partial payments made and the payments made in full which do not appear of record. In this connection data have also been obtained from which to make calculations of the average contract time for which mortgages are made and their actual life-time as shown by the history of mortgages canceled, with a view to the development of a possible equation by which to reach trustworthy results by less than the direct method.

In the State of New York Cattaraugus county has been selected as the field of inquiry, and a search of all the records back to 1818 has been effected. A personal inquiry instituted as to the actual debt represented by the total mortgages found uncanceled of record develops the fact that none but recent mortgages are really enforced. In this case the inquiry is also extended to the motive or occasion for contracting the debts recorded, as well as the partial and total payments. This will bring an additional feature of interest under consideration which is doubtless worthy of being pursued in any general investigation, provided it is found feasible.

The special agent who has been engaged in Hampden county, Massachusetts, has pursued a plan that depended very little upon obtaining information outside of the registry of deeds, his object being to develop the method of establishing the total existing real estate mortgage debt at any given date by the discovery and application of the average equated life of mortgages. His only recourse to inquiries addressed to parties to mortgages was to ascertain from savings-banks a percentage of deduction to be made from the established face of the debt for partial payment. Various facts were scheduled in regard to about 22,000 living and dead mortgages, representing loans amounting to $45,000,000. The aim was to establish the amount of debt with approximate accu