The United States of America, youngest by far of the world's great nations, stands today
the envy of the civilized world.
Its more than one hundred thirty million free people, its thirty-three million homes, its
seven million farms, its vast panorama of other resources, industry and commerce, machines
and structures beyond the dreams even of our own fathers.
And above all the material blessings, government by consent of the governed.
Educators sensitive to a democracy's constant need for more education.
Citizens free to speak out and able to analyze their own problems.
All these make up the United States of American of 1940.
A nation of vast human and physical resources.
Official scorekeeper of American development for one hundred fifty years has been the busy
but unspectacular United States Census.
Created by Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, its population figures since 1790 have determined
the number of delegates from each state in the House of Representatives.
Fifteen times, through wars, booms and panics, the census has presented a steadily broadening
picture of the nation in its ten-year inventories.
Congress has repeatedly extended the scope of census questions to meet the growing complexity
of American life.
In April, 1940 one hundred twenty thousand census takers are radiating in a carefully
planned pattern across America to complete, in a single month, the greatest inventory
of the world's greatest democracy.
Official census questions must be answered but the census taker is sworn to strict confidence
with heavy penalties for violation of his oath.
Rushed to Washington by registered mail, the reports are transformed into a series of holes
punched in coded cards.
Thus, these vast files become confidences between the citizen and the Census Bureau,
specifically protected by law.
Thousands of operators will sort and tabulate the millions of cards almost entirely with
machines, mechanical marvels of accuracy and speed.
And so will be written the official record of the 1940 America, with careful measurements
of its gains, its losses, and all its changes during the ten difficult years since the census
of 1930.
Unbiased facts to measure markets for business and the farmer, the plans of school and health
officials, the needs of local governments, facts to guide the lawmakers, facts from which
a free people can count its gains and chart its future.
For you cannot know your country unless your country knows you.