Communications
COMMUNICATIONS A NORDIC CENSUS Los Angeles, Cal. ' I *O the Editor:—In submitting to The Commonweal a A survey of the recent census of Los Angeles I assume that the affairs of this city...
...The individual canvassers were typical citizens proud of Los Angeles, and proud to have any kind of a job in these times...
...It would seem as though the official census for Los Angeles is just an arbitrary total reached by debate and compromise...
...There are certain well-established records of our acreage that we generously never stress...
...These three points are indeed notable...
...Mexico has just completed one with fine reports of progress all along the line...
...population, 584,144...
...It has doubled itself every decade for the past fifty years, and our spokesmen pledge the same record for the next fifty...
...population, 776,577- Census 1930: population, 789,000, against 836,000 estimated by the Chamber of Commerce...
...There are certain circumstances that mitigate the heinousness of the scientific fraud alleged by me...
...However, as I elucidate my charge that the published census is mere twaddle, the hidden and true first count will be quite accurately disclosed...
...Save for incidental items it has no weight at all...
...population, 1,070,450...
...Baltimore, 1920: deaths, 11,356...
...Census 1930: population, 1,564,397, against 1,565,100 claimed by its Chamber...
...In any case we know now that the death rates (deaths per 100,000) sent out by our Board of Health have been worthless...
...But the predictions varied so widely that no matter what glorious figures were reached someone would be discredited...
...Then let us put down the 1930 census and top it all off with the elaborate estimate made by the "experts" of the Chambers of Commerce...
...It should be published...
...The differences among the experts of the two local bodies were embarrassing and hard to account for...
...The past as an influence or a tradition is almost unknown here...
...For when the first figures came in (the real figures, the April figures that should be revealed) meetings were held as late as May by the census authorities with the Chamber of Commerce, the Citizens Committee and others to try and settle their differences...
...population 513,122...
...This fixed point is the number of deaths...
...Let me avoid any question of deliberate deceit and content myself with the statement that the errors, if there were any, were due to faulty adding-machines...
...All our high-priced professionals act like men possessed...
...In 1924 for some reason the offal study was dropped from the curriculum...
...The gloom was terrible...
...Rev...
...Census 1930...
...You see we do not make clear, nor do we act as though we ourselves knew, that within our boundaries Detroit, Cleveland, St...
...Moody's Financial Manual gave the city 1,500,000 souls...
...The simple task of the enumerators was confused by superstitious complications of a grave character...
...The population of Los Angeles, it is true, includes a very large number—probably more than a half—of Mexicans, Negroes, Orientals, Jews, Slavs, Latins and Celts, but politically they do not seem to exist...
...Cleveland's 1920 and 1921 death percentage applied to the 10,344 deaths of 1928 show a population of 908,203...
...Over and above this, however, my appeal to thinkers is founded peculiarly on the theory that Los Angeles is really the show-place of the modern age...
...In most cities, that I ran over, the accuracy of this index was remarkable...
...deaths, 7.2S9...
...One lady wrote "Roaming Catholic...
...Common sense tells us that, barring epidemics, the percentage of deaths in a community varies little with the years...
...The local press assure us that we have broken every known record...
...Until recently our papers used to publish great charts of the garbage collections as an accurate and beautiful way to estimate our growth...
...China never had one, yet its heads are all counted...
...The press of the country has made a front-page story of our growth...
...population, 740,172...
...And this arbitrary rate was used to find an arbitrary population total...
...So they got more time and, as one of the papers said, their second canvass produced very satisfactory results...
...and get results, as in the case of this city, no better than China's or Mexico's...
...Chilton by the Cardinal Secretary of State on January 29, I93O," occurs this statement as proof of "the anti-clerical attitude of Lord Strickland's policy" to wit: 1-2* "He exerted himself in every way to violate article 1 of the Constitution of Malta, which reads: "The religion of Malta is the Roman Catholic Apostolic Religion,' proposing that the word 'Roman' should be suppressed...
...So, by taking a year in which the population is not disputed, the deaths of that year will establish the average percentage of deaths to total population in any year...
...1928: deaths, 11,929...
...Bearing the degrees of "modern science" their work is to draw deductions from arbitrary assumptions that are based on other arbitrary assumptions...
...I *O the Editor:—In submitting to The Commonweal a A survey of the recent census of Los Angeles I assume that the affairs of this city interest citizens of the world more than those of any other city, with possibly two or three exceptions...
...No city in the world produces or ever produced such bumper crops of alfalfa...
...San Francisco, 1920...
...population, 310,659...
...The Health Bureau gave no reason whatever for their figures...
...I do not charge anyone with wilful fraud, though it takes real will power to eschew this motion...
...And our crime figures have been deductively criminal...
...And the tendencies of our ways and ideals are beautifully illustrated by the census, the making of it and the results of it...
...population (estimated on 1921 death average), 1,640,000...
...We may well be proud that profound thinkers honor us as the fastest growing city of history, leading centre of Nordic culture, and perfect exhibit of the emolumental influence of the established creed...
...and, I presume, all the glory that runs with so much soil...
...the local Chamber of Commerce said 1,427,480...
...Los Angeles, 1920: deaths, 8,274...
...The first form of deception practised by this community in the census is material rather than formal...
...In making an estimate, outside of a house-to-house canvas, of a city's population there is only one point that is fixed...
...1928: deaths, 3,985...
...In a "Pro-Memoria on the Activities of Lord Strickland in Malta with regard to the Catholic Church handed to Mr...
...Editor's Note: This controversy is herewith considered closed...
...Census 1930: population, 362,426, against 500,000 looked for by the Chamber...
...And even boastful New York falls far behind us in tonnage output of kohlrabi, okra, roselle, dikon, napa, taro, garlic and spinach —just to call off a few of our more common products...
...and its 46 square miles were moved bag and baggage to certain parts of our 442 square miles, years and years might pass by before anyone discovered it...
...We may well suspect all their varied and complicated computations on everything else...
...I surmise that the figure that shocked them was close to 961,191 and by no means 1,231,730...
...Seattle, 1920: deaths, 3,041...
...The Chamber's findings were "reliable" because its staff had made an elaborate check of "school-enrolment, directory count, water and gas meters, telephones in service and building statistics...
...ROMAN CATHOLIC" Louisville, Ky...
...We had made complete preparations and the first figures, low as thev may have seemed, gave the city all it deserved...
...Reverend Bruce Brown, D.D., of the Christian Church, on June 8 emitted the seraphic pronunciamiento that "the main reason . . . [for the growth of Los Angeles] is the standard that was lifted here by the Church...
...and the Bureau of Health said 1,350,000...
...The Nordic race, or better the Nordic idea, is clever—one sees this illustrated here on all sides...
...There is no doubt that our population has grown remarkably...
...Such a rate, if persisted in regularly or honestly, would mean that the life-span of a single generation in this Utopia would be 101 years...
...The Bureau just balked and halted at the death-rate of 9.9 per thousand...
...Our circle of friends and acquaintances is unquestionably colossal...
...1928: deaths, 8,274...
...population, 587,073...
...W. A. Bixel...
...And they did this to save the face of the Chamber of Commerce...
...I agree with him that the highest and proudest title is "Christian...
...After all a death-rate of 9.9 is no joke...
...Thus only a few counties anywhere produce larger field crops than this crowded city does...
...population of January 1, 1929 (based on 1920 death percentage), 961,191...
...The title "Roman Catholic," to which so many of us object, seems to be the expression which our coreligionists in Malta want...
...The fact is that we really have a high death-rate but the Chamber's estimate of population drives the death-rate so low as to be absurd...
...So when the corps started out to take the census of their home town, with every paper in a frenzy, with their pay dependent entirely on the names brought in, with their headquarters not in a federal building (where they most certainly should have been) but in the Chamber of Commerce, well, almost anything could happen, save one thing, viz., a low count...
...Readers of sociological bent will be interested to know that this city is the only large city in our country ruled entirely from top to bottom by the race known as the "white Nordic Protestant...
...The count was over in the time required by law —but the total did not suit the Chamber...
...The medicine-men had all predicted great totals for El Pueblo de Nuestra Sefiora la Reina de Los Angeles, as the city on the banks of the Rio Porciuncula used to call itself...
...1928: deaths, 16,061...
...Now I wish to state that if the Official Census of the United States of America for 1930 is no improvement on the census of Los Angeles it is worthless as a true and authentic record...
...They didn't dare...
...It would look better...
...Where there was a divergence, it was because the census as in Detroit gave less than the death index...
...The second form of deception is more odious than the first...
...This was practised in enumerating the inhabitants...
...It is a finding reasonably safe both against exaggeration and reduction...
...In every city the death index is the most reliable...
...population, 363,830...
...We are traveling rapidly towards the cultural nadir even if our publicity agents think of it as the zenith...
...TO the Editor:—With reference to the name "Roman Catholic" allow me to say that at the Methodist Michigan Church where I preach every summer Sunday afternoon, and where people of many varieties of Christian faith attend, we asked on one occasion that every member of the audience sign a card giving name, address and sect...
...To the esoterics it is merely a quibble about emphasis...
...Census 1930: population, 901,482, against 1,072,417 claimed by the Chamber of Commerce...
...The area, though, is legally ours...
...Los Angeles is now the fifth city in the United States, with great wealth and with industries of many kinds...
...But alone of all cities Los Angeles ran ahead of the estimate based on the 1920 deaths, and it ran ahead not by 1 or 2 percent but by 28 percent...
...This whole census idea is intriguing...
...Francis J. Martin...
...Having settled that I wish he would explain the number of suicides here, or the divorces...
...The chance cynic among The Commonweal's readers will be bowled over to hear that our growth has been officially endorsed as a concrete proof of the vitality of Christianity...
...The first count was the legal census...
...Allow me to express my immense admiration for the letter of John R. Cody in your issue of August 13...
...population, 625,974, against 756,188 claimed by the Chamber of Commerce...
...Being human each one instinctively would be kind to himself and to his own...
...No gentleman would have questioned the decision...
...what I wish to blame especially is our modern system of municipal and business ethics...
...Yet by figuring on deaths alone any amateur may estimate a city's population with accuracy, incredibly better than the "experts...
...TO the Editor:—A passage from the Blue Book, issued by His Britannic Majesty's government, reproducing "Correspondence with the Holy See relative to Maltese Affairs," furnishes interesting reading in the light of your discussion on "Catholic" or "Roman Catholic...
...Thus it was evident he could only disgust and offend the Catholics, for whom the word 'Roman' was precisely the expression which distinguished the Catholic religion from all other Christian confessions...
...May the Nordics be as gentle to the Patagonians if they are ever so silly as to attempt a census, or are ever so slouchy as to be caught padding the figures, of their dear Tierra Del Fuego...
...Huron City, Mich...
...Taking all our figures from the World Almanac let us apply this test to other cities before applying it to Los Angeles...
...Let us first take the 1920 population and deaths, and taking their relation as normal, then estimate the population of the latest year for which we have the deaths, by this relation...
...William Lyon Phelps...
...I think a few affidavits ought to be called for...
...We, on the other hand, spend millions, hire thousands of workers, buy huge amounts of supplies (thanks be to heaven no one ever suspected graft in federal purchases...
...Detroit, 1921: deaths, 10,356...
...The government wasted no vast sums of money, and indulged in no nonsense: it simply issued the figures...
...1928: deaths, 13,557...
...And if San Francisco (it once hoped to rival us...
...Everything else is hypothetical...
...Real "experts" it would seem never study this total, for either it is beneath contempt or it escapes their notice...
...And where there was a divergence it was only fractional either way...
...Our census, as I see it, is a purely self-serving document, glaringly and openly false...
...And may a "non-expert" suggest to "experts" generally but in particular to that array of statistological buccaneers on the pay-roll of the Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles, pride of the Nordics and ultra-moderns, that they remember that, while anyone may make mistakes, the mark of the mental thoroughbred is to err, if err he must, by understatement rather than by overstatement...
...From this quotation it appears that the Catholics who shun the term Roman Catholic want to be more Catholic than the Pope or at least the Cardinal Secretary of State...
...Official" Census 1930: population, 1,231,730, against 1,427,480 claimed by the Chamber of Commerce...
...Louis, Boston, Cincinnati, Seattle and Providence could be located and still leave us land enough for our population...
Vol. 12 • August 1930 • No. 17
