90 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
of those who would otherwise have been included in the number of child workers, no note is made in the remarks of the census.
The writer having called attention to this change, and that Colonel Wright, in his report on th^ employment of women and children, to discredit the investigation of his own department, quoted the tables of occupation in utter disregard of this important change, Mr. Steuart, in his reply, endeavors to mislead the public by quoting from the writer's criticism of Colonel Wright's Record article, and declaring : " Colonel Wright had reference entirely to statistics as reported by manufacturing establishments, and in them the question as to ' age nearest birthday ' or at ' last birthday ' did not appear at either census." As to his Record z.iX\c\& this is true, and the writer is perhaps in error in supposing that this change affected the manufacturing statistics; that, in ascertaining the number of workers below fifteen and sixteen years of age, the enumerators who returned a large proportion of manufacturing establishments took any notice of the words which they found on their instructions, repeated from the population sched- ule in bold-face type, " age nearest birthday." Not being an eminent census official, the writer makes no claim to infallibility, and should feel obliged to Mr. Steuart for pointing out this error, had he not in doing so endeavored to lead the public to infer that he was also in error in his more important criticism of Colonel Wright's quotation of the returns of occupation, in which Mr. Steuart does not deny that the change from age last birthday to age nearest birthday was made. A comparison of manufacturing and occupation statistics necessarily fails to fully indicate their unreliability, because the deficiencies in one class of returns must to a large extent offset and conceal those of the other. The deficiency of both of these classes of census statistics is shown where comparison is possible with factory inspectors' reports. These latter are admittedly incomplete, save as to establishments employing a considerable number of females or children. The follow- ing comparisons of statistics of the tables of occupation returned by the enumerators of population and those of the manufacturing reports are given as illustrations of the unreliability of one or both classes of statistics.
Taking the state of Nebraska, in which a large proportion of the manufacturing returns must have been made by the same officials who made the returns of occupation and of unemployment, we find the occu- pation returns of the number of persons ten years of age and over engaged in manufacturing and mechanical industry, and the manu- facturing returns, to be as follows :
