100,000 Counted in Two Days but About 750,000 Have to Be Listed Here by April 15
The tramp, tramp, tramp of census takers is showing results.
Nearly 100,000 persons were counted on the first two days, according to crew leaders’ progress reports received in the Buffalo District office Monday afternoon.
Supervisor Russell L. Bailey considers this a good start — but it doesn’t quite match the daily pace required to finish the canvass by April 15.
Thirteen days are set aside to do the job. The two Sundays in the April 1-15 period are not working days. The 1950 count in the 41st and 42d Congressional Districts — the area for the Buffalo office — was 824,859.
Blue Forms Returned
Assuming 850,000 to count this year, the average daily portion necessary to meet the deadline is 65,400.
Incoming mail at the census office in the old custom house, Washington & Seneca Sts., is another sign that enumerators have been on the go.
Four mail bags filled with the more detailed household questionnaires were delivered Monday. They held an estimated 2000 of the blue forms left at every fourth house with instructions that they be filled out and mailed within three days to the local census headquarters.
These questionnaires have been the topic of several telephone calls to the office.
Needs Data From Wife
A man who had one said Monday he was stumped because his wife was in Boston.
“How am I going to answer the questions about her — the ones on how far she went in school, where she attended school, has she been married more than once — and where was her mother born?” he inquired.
“I don’t know the answers. What will I do?”
A woman caller had an entirely different problem.
“How come my neighbor was left a blue form to fill out and I wasn’t?” she asked indignantly.
The affront was assuaged with the explanation that she was in the majority of 75% without a blue form.
All Must Be Visited
In some cases the advance census forms mailed to homes last month with the request that they be filled out and handed to the enumerators when they call, have been left in mail boxes and — in one instance — taped to a storm door.
This is the wrong method to get the report to the enumerator, Mr. Bailey said. He advised, if no one is to be at home, that the head of the house leave the filled-out form with a neighbor to hand to the census taker.
Call-backs will have to be made at every dwelling where the form was left in the mail box or taped to the door.
Incidentally, during the first two days, according to the crew leaders’ reports, the census takers found nobody at home at nearly 3000 stops. They will have to go back to each place.
