LIBRARY 
 
 Of- JHE 
 
 UNIVERSITY Of ILLINOI' 
 
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 Frauds in the taking of the Federal Census 
 in Maryland; Illustrating the need of a 
 Non-partisan Merit System for the Ap¬ 
 pointment of Enumerators. 
 
 A REPORT 
 
 PREPARED BY THE 
 
 INVESTIGATING COMMITTEE 
 
 OF THE 
 
 National Civil-Service Reform League, 
 
 1901 . 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2018 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates 
 
 https://archive.org/details/fraudsintakingofOOnati 
 
Frauds in the taking of the Federal Census 
 in Maryland; Illustrating the need of a 
 Non-partisan Merit System for the Appoint¬ 
 ment of Enumerators. 
 
 A REPORT. 
 
 To the Council of the National Civil Service Reform League: 
 
 Your Co'mmittee appointed to investigate the condition 
 of the Federal civil service, respectfully offers the following 
 report in regard to certain frauds in the enumeration of inhabi¬ 
 tants under the last census, resulting from the patronage sys¬ 
 tem of appointments. 
 
 Ten years ago a Committee of the League presented a 
 report showing the lamentable results of a partisan Census, in 
 the increased extravagance of the Bureau itself, the demorali¬ 
 zation of the force employed, the worthlessness of a Census 
 so taken, and the lack of public confidence in its accuracy 
 and impartiality. 
 
 It is now the duty of your Committee to report a striking 
 example of a recurrence of some of the evils which then ex¬ 
 isted, under the present similar system of patronage appoint¬ 
 ments and partisan control. 
 
 The present Director of the Census, Mr. W. R. Merriam, 
 is a man of undoubted capacity and energy, who has succeeded 
 in avoiding many of the evils which infected the administra¬ 
 tion of the Census Bureau under his predecessor. It is fair to 
 him to state that he is in no respect personally responsible for 
 the corrupt practices detailed in this report, but that he has 
 shown a commendable eagerness in urging the prosecution of 
 offenders and securing the punishment of the guilty. 
 
 But the essential vice of the system still remains. The law 
 provides that the enumeration of inhabitants shall be made by 
 
 P 
 
enumerators selected by the supervisors of the various census 
 districts, and these supervisors themselves are appointed by 
 the President, without any requirement of competitive examin¬ 
 ation or promotion, or any method of securing non-partisan 
 appointments. The result is that these supervisors are ap¬ 
 pointed, and the enumerators under them are selected, almost 
 entirely, from the party in power (often through its local 
 organization) a few exceptions, amounting to about one-sixth 
 of the whole number, being made in the South in districts 
 where it was found difficult to secure efficient supervisors 
 from that party. These appointments being political, it fol¬ 
 lowed inevitably that they were made by the President upon 
 the recommendation of Congressmen, and it was also inevita¬ 
 ble that the appointees should use the power given to them 
 for the benefit not merely of the Republican party, but some¬ 
 times, also, of the particular Congressman who secured their 
 appointment. 
 
 The enumeration made in the Congressional District repre¬ 
 sented by the Hon. Sydney E. Mudd, a Republican Congress¬ 
 man from Maryland, furnishes a conspicuous instance of this. 
 Mr. Mudd secured the appointment of William T. S. Rollins, 
 as Supervisor for the Third Maryland District, which includes 
 the counties of St. Mary’s, Charles, Calvert, Anne Arundel, 
 and others, all within Mr. Mudd’s Congressional district. 
 
 The Constitution of Maryland provides that any county 
 containing a population of less than 18,000 shall have two 
 members in the House of Delegates. If the county contains 
 a population between 18,000 and 28,000 it is to have three 
 members; if between 28,000 and 40,000, four members; if 
 between 40,000 and 55,000, five members. The appointment 
 is to be made upon the basis of the Federal Census, unless a 
 State Census is taken. From these provisions of the Consti¬ 
 tution, it was manifestly to the interest not only of the Repub¬ 
 lican party, but of Mr. Mudd personally—the leader of that 
 party in his district—to have the representation of all the 
 counties which were reliably or probably Republican, as large 
 as possible. If he could secure additional Republican mem¬ 
 bers of the House of Delegates from the several counties in 
 his district, he would acquire additional influence in the Mary¬ 
 land Legislature, both in the Republican caucus and in the 
 final vote, whereby a United States senator should be chosen 
 to succeed Senator Wellington, at the coming election, next 
 Fall. 
 
s 
 
 The three counties, St. Mary's, Charles, and Anne Arundel, 
 offered an opportunity for a gain in the number of delegates. 
 The first two are Republican counties, and in Anne Arundel 
 there is a reasonable probability of Republican success. In 
 St. Mary's County, the census of 1880 showed a population 
 of 16,934; the census of 1890 a population of 15,819. It was 
 assumed that the census of 1890 was defective, owing to the 
 fact that the enumerators were required to make inquiries upon 
 such a large number of subjects that in the rural districts their 
 work did not pay, and it was to some extent neglected. 
 There was therefore the suggestion of probability that the 
 population of St. Mary’s county was not much under 18,000. 
 In Charles county the census of 1880 showed a population of 
 18,548; the census of 1890 a population of 15,191. For 
 similar reasons it seemed likely that the population of Charles 
 county was very close to the 18,000 limit. In Anne Arundel 
 the census of 1880 showed a population of 28,526; the census 
 of 1890, a population of 34,094. It was possible that Anne 
 Arundel county might come very near the 40,000 limit. 
 
 Accordingly, it so happened that after the population in 
 these counties was announced, about the middle of last De¬ 
 cember, it was found that the enumeration in St. Mary’s county 
 showed 18,136 inhabitants, in Charles county 18,316 inhabi¬ 
 tants and in Anne Arundel county, 40,018. There was thus 
 a gain of one member, in the representation of each of the 
 three counties in the House of Delegates. 
 
 Suspicion was naturally aroused, especially by the fact 
 that in other counties in the district of Mr. Mudd, such as 
 Calvert county, which contained a population of 9,800 and 
 was thus hopelessly within the 18,000 limit, there was no great 
 growth in the population. 
 
 In the early part of February, Governor Smith of Mary¬ 
 land, issued a proclamation calling for an extra session of the 
 Legislature (which was Democratic) to amend the ballot law, 
 and to provide for a State census, on account of the belief 
 that there were frauds or errors in the Federal enumeration. 
 He addressed a letter to the Director of the Census, asking 
 what would be the cost of copies of the names enumerated in 
 six or eight counties, including those above named. While 
 the correspondence was pending upon this subject, the Director 
 of the Census w ? as asked by certain prominent Maryland Re¬ 
 publicans, to make a thorough investigation of the enumera¬ 
 tion in these counties, they believing that the charges of fraud 
 
6 
 
 were unfounded. It was decided to begin in St. Mary’s 
 county, and the Director of the Census called upon Mr. Sloane, 
 Chief of the Geographer’s Division, to begin an investigation. 
 
 On February 27th, the investigation commenced at 
 Leonardtown, the county seat of St. Mary’s county. Con¬ 
 gressman Mudd, on learning of this, requested of Mr. Sloane, 
 (the Director of the Census being absent) that Mr. Guernsey, 
 the officer in charge of the inquiry, should be instructed to 
 confer with Joseph H. Ching of Leonardtown. Accordingly 
 Mr. Sloane, on the 28th, wrote a letter to Mr. Guernsey to 
 that effect. When Guernsey came out of the Post-office at 
 Leonardtown with the letter Mr. Ching asked him, “Did they 
 not tell you at the office to confer with me?” 
 
 Guernsey now went over the schedules of population re¬ 
 turned by Stephen A. Abell, one of the enumerators, and 
 found the enumeration substantially correct throughout the 
 first eighteen schedules comprising 1,713 names; but the 528 
 names on the last six schedules could not be accounted for. 
 Ching claimed that all these names were those of genuine 
 inhabitants of the district, but did not give any information 
 where any of them could be seen. The Director of the Cen¬ 
 sus then determined to make a complete investigation, and 
 Dr. Frederick H. Wines, the Assistant Director, was sent to 
 St. Mary’s County with a force of clerks to make a house to 
 house canvass of the county. The results of this inquiry, as 
 developed in a recent trial in the United States District Court 
 of an indictment returned by the Federal Grand Jury against 
 Joseph H. Ching, Stephen A. Abell, Daniel J. Bowles, Charles 
 H. Guyther and Philip T. Graves for conspiracy in making 
 fictitious returns of population are as follows: 
 
 It appears that in July, 1900, the enumerators in St. Mary’s 
 County had completed their enumeration. Their returns 
 showed the population of the county to be 16,998, or 1,002 
 less than the 18,000 limit fixed by the Constitution of Mary¬ 
 land. Mr. Ching went to Washington and complained to 
 Mr. Rollins, the Supervisor of the Census District that the 
 enumerators had omitted a considerable number of people 
 whom they ought to have enumerated, and said that there 
 was complaint in the county to that effect. Mr. Rollins ex¬ 
 pressed a doubt as to whether he could do anything since the 
 limit of thirty days prescribed by the Census Act for the com¬ 
 pletion of the census had expired. Mr. Ching being still 
 urgent, Mr. Rollins, accompanied by Congressman Mudd, 
 
? 
 
 went to see the Director of the Census who referred them to 
 William C. Hunt, Chief Statistician for population. Mr. Mudd 
 asked Mr. Hunt whether the Supervisor could send out addi¬ 
 tional schedules where he believed the people entitled to 
 enumeration had been overlooked. Mr. Hunt answered 
 that it was his duty to do so. Whereupon, Supervisor Rol¬ 
 lins wrote to each enumerator in charge in St. Mary’s County 
 a letter suggesting that perhaps they had made omissions and 
 that if so, they should enumerate the omitted names and 
 return the blank to him. 
 
 Four of the enumerators in St. Mary’s County, viz: Abell, 
 Bowles, Guyther and Graves, sent in supplementary schedules 
 including in all 1,138 additional names, sufficient to raise the 
 total of population to 136 above 18,000. 
 
 Guyther, who pleaded guilty to the indictment for con¬ 
 spiracy and who testified for the Government in the recent 
 trial, swore that Ching saw him and told him to act on Super¬ 
 visor Rollin’s letter and that he ought to get from 150 to 200 
 additional names. Guyther answered that he did not know 
 where to get them. Ching replied that if he could not get 
 them anywhere else he could go to the summer hotels in the 
 district and enumerate their guests, adding the significant in¬ 
 quiry “ Are there no grave-yards in the district ?” Guyther 
 then put on his additional schedules the names of thirty or 
 forty people who had once lived in the district, but who had 
 removed from it, and made up the balance of his 198 either 
 out of his imagination or by obtaining the names of summer 
 boarders and nurse girls at the hotels, filling up the ages, 
 occupations, etc., at will. 
 
 Enumerator Graves wrote to Supervisor Rollins that he 
 did not think he had made any omissions and that if he had 
 made any he had no way of finding out what they were, and 
 he asked who would pay for doing the work of getting up 
 these supplemental schedules. He received no answer from 
 Rollins, but Ching told him that he must do as he had been 
 directed, anyway, and that he must have the names in by the 
 first of August; so he sent exactly 100 additional names. 
 None of these were fictitious. A dozen of them were dupli¬ 
 cates of names already sent in, which Graves explains by say¬ 
 ing that he did not have his original schedules before him and 
 did not know he had already included them. Some of the 
 names returned by him on the supplementary schedule were 
 names of persons whom he had really omitted in his first 
 
8 
 
 enumeration, and the remainder were made up of people whose 
 cases he had considered when he made up his first schedule 
 but who he had then decided were not entitled to enumera¬ 
 tion. The Government in his case consented to a verdict of 
 not guilty. 
 
 Of the 528 names returned by Abell, on his supplementary 
 list, 73 were in Ching’s handwriting. Among these 528 are 
 some 29 dead people who had been dead any length of time, 
 from a few months to twenty years or more. Many of these 
 were well-known people of whose deaths Abell was perfectly 
 well aware. He took the witness stand in his own behalf 
 and, in one case, admitted that he knew these people were 
 dead, explaining his returning a dead man by saying, “ Well, 
 he had not been dead very long, anyhow.” Of the 528, 
 more than 127 had never lived in the district at all. Most, 
 but not all, of these people had at one time or another lived 
 in other portions of the county but had moved away years 
 before. Abell, when asked why he had enumerated some of 
 these people in his district, said, “ Well they lived in my dis¬ 
 trict now as much as they did in any other part of the county,” 
 which was, of course, entirely true. The balance of the 
 names, with a very few exceptions, not more than twenty, 
 were either entirely fictitious or were those of people who had 
 once lived in the district but who had left it at periods varying 
 from six months to thirty-two years before the date of the census. 
 
 Bowles returned 312 additional names in his supple¬ 
 mentary schedules. Of these 55 were those of dead people 
 and the balance were those of people who had never lived in 
 the district, or had left it, or were entirely fictitious. Many of 
 the statements made by Bowles in his schedules are extremely 
 amusing. In one instance Eccleston S. Graves appears as a 
 school teacher six years old. Thomas J. Graves, aged two 
 years, is described as a farm laborer, who was employed dur¬ 
 ing the entire census year and who could read, write and 
 speak English. Joshua Niles, colored, two years old, is said 
 to be a carpenter. He was no less industrious and fortunate 
 than Thomas Graves, and was not out of employment at any 
 time during the census year. He also could read, write and 
 speak English. 
 
 Abell, or rather Ching, (for those particular entries are in 
 Ching’s handwriting), not only enumerated a dead woman, 
 but also the Washington undertaker who had come down to 
 Leonardtown to bury her. 
 
9 
 
 For some reason, probably as a compromise, the jury in 
 the recent trial in the United States Court which lasted for 
 two weeks, and in the course of which some two hundred 
 witnesses were examined, acquitted Bowles and Abell of the 
 charge of conspiracy, but convicted Ching of conspiring with 
 Guyther, who had pleaded guilty. 
 
 No attempt was made in the trial to deny the absolutely 
 fraudulent character of these supplemental schedules. 
 
 Other indictments for making false returns are pending 
 against Abell and Bowles. 
 
 Congressman Mudd wrote directly to most of his enumer¬ 
 ators in Charles County, asking them to be very careful not 
 to omit anybody, since they might get an additional repre¬ 
 sentative. He said in these letters that they had a right to 
 enumerate those who had resided in the countv, and who still 
 claimed a residence there, intending to return, although they 
 had been away for some time. 
 
 The enumeration in Charles County also contains many 
 names which ought not to be there, although in nearly every 
 case there is some sort of attenuated theory, or some possible 
 mistake accounting for the enumeration, and no one there has 
 yet been indicted. "The Director of the Census estimates the 
 difference in this county between the true enumeration and 
 that actually made, as between five hundred and six hundred. 
 
 In Anne Arundel County, between 3,000 and 4,000 berry- 
 pickers, who were in the county from two to six weeks tem¬ 
 porarily, were included in the enumeration. The theories of 
 the enumerators in St. Mary’s and Anne Arundel counties 
 appear to have been antagonistic: in the one case absentees 
 who intended to return were counted, and in the other case 
 an enumeration was made of those temporarily present. In 
 each case, however, the result was the same—to increase the 
 enumeration. Most of these berry-pickers cannot now be 
 identified, or found at all. About four hundred have been 
 traced to Baltimore. It is hard to tell how many of them 
 were actually in the county at the time of taking the census. 
 
 Whatever may be the cause of the excessive enumeration 
 in this county, there can be no doubt that in Charles and St. 
 Mary’s it was due to the fact that the officers by whom it was 
 conducted were political or patronage appointments, and we 
 feel that we cannot more fittingly conclude our report upon 
 this subject than by quoting verbatim the presentment of the 
 Federal Grand Jury which examined these cases: 
 
10 
 
 “ The evidence presented to us in relation to the census 
 frauds perpetrated in St. Mary’s, Anne Arundel and Charles 
 counties, to our minds, proves beyond a doubt that the sys¬ 
 tem by which such appointments were made of enumerators 
 in the various counties examined by us could be improved 
 upon, and that some action on the part of the Government to 
 correct this system of making appointments is called for. 
 Enumerators are generally selected by the political leaders in 
 their districts, thus placing the appointees more or less under 
 the influence of politicians. So long as such appointments 
 are treated as part of the spoils of politics, the recurrence of 
 such frauds and scandals as have been revealed by our inves¬ 
 tigations may be expected. We would suggest that such 
 appointments should be on a non-partisan basis, and from the 
 best material, regarding only ability, intelligence and char¬ 
 acter.” 
 
 It is evident that the true remedy for the monstrous abuses 
 that occur in the taking of the census is to remove the appoint¬ 
 ment of Supervisors (and, consequently, of the enumerators 
 selected by them) from the field of partisan politics, by includ¬ 
 ing this branch of the service within the classified system and 
 by making appointments thereto depend solely upon the 
 ground of fitness, as ascertained by competitive examination. 
 
 Respectfully submitted, 
 
 William Dudley Foulke, 
 Richard Henry Dana, 
 William A. Aiken, 
 
 Charles Richardson, 
 George McAneny. 
 
 June 24, 1901 . 
 
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