It was Colonel Waring’s original design to embrace in his work the statistics of the twenty largest cities of the country, and these happened to be the cities that in 1880 had more than one hundred thousand inhabitants.  Then it was decided to allow the smaller cities to be represented if they chose, and early in the work steps were taken to induce them to furnish the necessary material.  Over two hundred of the largest were given all the opportunities for representation that could be asked for, and, as a consequence, nearly every community in the land containing more than ten thousand inhabitants has a more or less full account.  Each one of these is prefaced by a small outline plan, on which is marked the direction in which the surrounding cities lie, and the distance to each.  Accompanying this plan are tables of the population at different decades, and of the sex, color, and nativity of the present population.  Then comes an historical sketch, and then an account of the present condition of the community.  This last describes the location and topography fully; gives the principal features of the country immediately tributary; details the facilities for communication given by railroads and by water; gives statistics about the climate; describes the public buildings and public works, including water and gas works; gives figures about the streets, horse railroads, and markets; touches upon the places and methods of amusement, and the parks and pleasure-grounds; the sewers, the cemeteries, sanitary organization (boards of health), and the system, or lack of system, of municipal cleansing,—­all receive especially full treatment, as would naturally be expected when a sanitary engineer of Colonel Waring’s stamp had charge of the work; the police department gets its share of the space; and in some cases the schools, fire department, and commerce are represented.  The material from which these accounts were compiled was, in the main, obtained by sending schedules of questions to the various town and city officials; in the case of some of the largest cities the material was secured by special agents, but in general, the desire of the cities to be represented was considered sufficient guaranty that the schedule would be filled out fully and accurately, and this generally proved to be the case.

The historical sketches of the smaller cities and towns were compiled from information obtained in the same way, and from gazetteers, encyclopaedias, town and city histories, and all other sources available at the headquarters of the bureau.  To the preparation of the sketches of the twenty largest cities, especial attention was devoted, and the results have been correspondingly valuable.  Perhaps the most important, both from the historical and literary point of view, will be the sketch of the history of New Orleans, written by George W. Cable, who is better known as a novelist, but who has no mean abilities as an historian.  His familiarity with the Creole element in New Orleans past and present, together with a very happy style of writing, have made for him more than a national reputation, from which this sketch will not detract.  Originally his work was intended to occupy some ninety pages of the report, but later, unfortunately, it had to be condensed into fifty.  Luckily it will not be found necessary to omit a number of interesting maps that accompany it.