ILLUSTRATIONS

The Statue of Liberty (Frontispiece)
Taking the Census in Old Kentucky
Kentucky Mountaineer Family
Moonshining
Bill Wilsh’s Home in the Gully
Bill Wilsh in the School
Alligator-Catching
The Census Building
Making Gun-sights True
“A Bull’s-eye Every Time!”
Young Boys from the Pit
“I ’ain’t Seen Daylight for Two Years”
Eight Years Old and “Tired of Working”
The Biggest Liner in the World Coming in
Immigration Station, Ellis Island
Where the Workers Come from
On a Peanut Farm
In an All-Negro Town
“‘Way down Yonder in de Cotton Fiel’”
How Most of the Negroes Live
Facsimile of Punched Census Card
Tabulating Machine
Pin-box and Mercury Cups
Over the Trackless Snow with Dog-team
The Census in the Aleutian Islands
“Can We Make Camp?”
To Eskimo Settlements by Reindeer
Gathering Cocoanuts
Taking the Census in a City
Festa in the Italian Quarter
The Fighting Men of the Tongs
Arrested as the Firing Stops
Work for Americans

THE BOY WITH THE U.S.  CENSUS

CHAPTER I

A BLOOD FEUD IN OLD KENTUCKY

“Uncle Eli,” said Hamilton suddenly, “since I’m going to be a census-taker, I think I’d like to apply for this district.”

The old Kentucky mountaineer, who had been steadily working his way through the weekly paper, lowered it so that he could look over the top of the page, and eyed the boy steadfastly.

“What for?” he queried.

“I think I could do it better than almost anybody else in this section,” was the ready, if not modest, reply.

“Wa’al, perhaps yo’ might,” the other assented and took up the paper again.  Hamilton waited.  He had spent but little time in the mountains but he had learned the value of allowing topics to develop slowly, even though his host was better informed than most of the people in the region.  Although not an actual relative, Hamilton always called him “Uncle” because he had fought with distinguished honor in the regiment that Hamilton’s father commanded during the Civil War, and the two men ever since had been friends.

“I don’t quite see why any one sh’d elect to take a hand in any such doin’s unless he has to,” the Kentuckian resumed, after a pause; “that census business seems kind of inquisitive some way to me.”

“But it seems to me that it’s the right kind of ‘inquisitive.’”

“I reckon I hadn’t thought o’ there bein’ more’n one kind of inquisitiveness,” the mountaineer said, with a smile, “but if you say so, I s’pose it’s all right.”

“But don’t you think the questions are easy enough?” asked the boy.

“They may be easy, but thar’s no denyin’ that some of ’em are mighty unpleasant to answer.”