Audiences and Publics: The Census, Art and Science

Audiences and Publics: The Census, Art and Science

Margo AndersonPresidential Address

Social Science History Association November 3, 2006

The West Wing Takes the 2000 Census

Liverpool Creamware Pitchers

1790 Census

Liverpool Creamware

Pitcher

Francis Edmonds, The Bashful Cousin, c. 1841-1842, The New

Bonnet, 1858

Francis Edmonds, Taking the Census, 1853

Francis Edmonds, Taking the Census, 1853

“The Great Tribulation,” The Saturday Evening Post,

1860

Michael Casey, “Taking the Census” by John Kaiser,

Edison Records, 1905

Casey Taking the Census• CASEY: And here am I. I don’t like this job of taking the

census. Everywhere I go they think I’m a bugler [burglar] and I’m trying to swipe something. My God, I have sores on me hands and blisters on me feet from going up and down up stairs and ringing doorbells. Ah, here am I. I’ll try this place anyway

• Knock, Knock• CASEY: By Golly, look at the face on this coming to the

door. Face to face to ya to like [unintelligible]...• MRS MULCAHY: Well?• CASEY: Well?• MRS MULCAHY: Well?• CASEY: Well?

Casey Taking the Census• MRS MULCAHY: Well? Whatya want?• CASEY: I don’t want anything. I’m taking the census, do ya mind. • MRS MULCAHY: Look here, if you take anything around here I’ll

have you arrested.• CASEY: Never mind now, don’t get excitement. I’m going to ask

you a few questions. And, if you don’t answer them right, I’m gonna have you pinched. Do you mind that? Now what’s your name?

• MRS MULCAHY: Castoria Mulcahy• CASEY: Mmmmm, Castoria Mulcahy, hey. How do you spell it? • MRS MULCAHY: What?• CASEY: Mulcahy.• MRS MULCAHY: Mu... Mu... Mu...• CASEY: M U D, Mud, can’t you spell your own name? Mind ya,

what are ya? Are ya French or German?

Casey Taking the Census

• MRS MULCAHY: I’m neither, I’m Irish.• CASEY: Are you, by golly. Are ya married?• MRS MULCAHY: Yes.• CASEY: What for?• MRS MULCAHY: I dunno.• CASEY: I guess you don’t know anything, do ya. Look here. Have

you made any donations to the matrimonial fruit basket? • MRS MULCAHY: What...? [unintelligible]• CASEY: I mean to say have you any children? • ……………….

Michael Casey, “Taking the Census” by John Kaiser,

Edison Records, 1905

Robert Frost’s Census: 1920

“The Census Taker,” Robert Frost

• I came an errand one cloud-blowing evening To a slab-built, black-paper-covered house Of one room and one window and one door, The only dwelling in a waste cut over A hundred square miles round it in the mountains: And that not dwelt in now by men or women. (It never had been dwelt in, though, by women, So what is this I make a sorrow of?) I came as census-taker to the waste To count the people in it and found none…

“The Census Taker,” Robert Frost

• …The melancholy of having to count souls Where they grow fewer and fewer every year Is extreme where they shrink to none at all. It must be I want life to go on living.

Census Publications

Civil War Demographic Map

Civil War Demographic Map

Dedication

…corresponding with the official returns of the 8th Census

1870 Census Atlas: Population Density

1870 Census Atlas

Death by Consumption, Malarial Diseases, 1870

Apportionment of U.S. House, 2000 Census

Center of Population, 1790-1870

Center of Population, 1790-2000

Census Proclamations

Advertising the 1940 Census

Public Service

Advertising for the 1950

Census

Census Director, Kenneth

Prewitt in Alaska in January

2000

U.S. Census Bureau Pop Clock

The West Wing Takes the 2000 Census

Explaining the Census….

• CJ: Explain it to me.• Sam: The Constitution mandates that every ten years, we count

everybody.• CJ: Why?• Sam: Because representation at the various levels of the

government -- federal, state, and municipal -- is based on population. The only way to find out how many Congressmen California gets is to count the people in California. Got it?

• CJ: Can I just say that if the briefing book had been written that clearly, I would have easily understood.

• Sam: We're not done yet…..

But I am for this Evening…

• Thank you….and on to our reception….

• You’ll have to read more in Social Science History . . .

• About our audiences and publics….

“My daddy says grandma is in the census, but I am sure mummy said she is in Iowa.”