[Illustration: THE STATUE OF LIBERTY. The welcome of New York, the gateway of the New World, to all races and peoples of the earth. (_Courtesy of U.S. Immigration Station, Ellis Island._)] THE BOY WITH THE U.S. CENSUS BY FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER [Illustration: The Boy With the U.S. Census] With Thirty-eight Illustrations, principally from Bureaus of the United States Government November, 1911 To My Son Roger's Friend HAMILTON DAY PREFACE Life in America to-day is adventurous and thrilling to the core. Border warfare of the most primitive type still is waged in mountain fastnesses, the darkest pages in the annals of crime now are being written, piracy has but changed its scene of operations from the sea to the land, smugglers ply a busy trade, and from their factory prisons a hundred thousand children cry aloud for rescue. The flame of Crusade sweeps over the land and the call for volunteers is abroad. In hazardous scout duty into these fields of danger the Census Bureau leads. The Census is the sword that shatters secrecy, the key that opens trebly-guarded doors; the Enumerator is vested with the Nation's greatest right--the Right To Know--and on his findings all battle-lines depend. "When through Atlantic and Pacific gateways, Slavic, Italic, and Mongol hordes threaten the persistence of an American America, his is the task to show the absorption of widely diverse peoples, to chronicle the advances of civilization, or point the perils of illiterate and alien-tongue communities. To show how this great Census work is done, to reveal the mysteries its figures half-disclose, to point the paths to heroism in the United States to-day, and to bind closer the kinship between all peoples of the earth who have become "Americans" is the aim and purpose of THE AUTHOR. CONTENTS CHAPTER I A BLOOD FEUD IN OLD KENTUCKY CHAPTER II RESCUING A LOST RACE CHAPTER III A MANUFACTORY OF RIFLES CHAPTER IV THE BOY LEADER OF A CRUSADE CHAPTER V "DON'T DEPORT MY OLD MOTHER!" CHAPTER VI THE NEGRO CENSUS FROM THE SADDLE CHAPTER VII HOBOES ON THE TRAMP CHAPTER VIII THE CENSUS HEROES OF THE FROZEN NORTH CHAPTER IX CONFRONTED WITH THE BLACK HAND CHAPTER X RIOTS AROUND A CITY SCHOOL ILLUSTRATIONS