THE BOY WITH THE U.S. CENSUS

BY FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER

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

PREFACE
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

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