The Province from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 37

THE VANCOUVER SUNDAY PROVINCE THIRTY-SEVENTH, YEAR NO. PRICE FIVE CENTS. VANCOUVER, B.C., SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 80, 1930. D. WS3 Canada.

PI WZ i JNOWlGOCOOGLl OUT YOUR BORN ONE SECOND FROM rv WA' IT WITH ALL KLOOCHNEm YOUR JGLOO 31 MIDNIGHT -WHY 245. is find the questions too searching, consider them impertinent. Nevertheless, all questions must be answered upon penalty of $100 fine and thirty days in jail. Census enumerators can not be evaded or ejected. But Parliament has decreed that information given to a census-taker is confidential.

No other department of government may search the census records to see if you are paying your taxes, making more money than you show on your income tax returns. Even enumerators are bound, upon penalty of imprisonment, not to make copies of individual returns. There must be but one copy of the census questionnaire in each case, and that copy must be forwarded promptly to Ottawa. Thereafter no one, not excepting the prime minister of Canada, may ask for information given by any individual. The returns must not be tabulated according to individuals, but in groups and wide sections, so that the conclusions arrived at are national and disclose no one's personal business.

DOMINION SURVEYS ITSELF. The business of census-taking is as old as civilization. The desire of nations to know and measure their progress is inbred in hu-manity. The King of Babylon took a census of his subjects 4000 years before Christ; a census of China was taken in 3000 B.C., and of Egypt in 2200, B.C. Moses numbered the children of Israel in the fifteenth century B.C.

David took a census in 1017 B.C., achiev- ing thereby on evil notoriety because of the Divine wrath which he was thought to have provoked. manifestation of Divine displeasure with census-taking was interpreted for many generations as a warning against a spirit of enquiry. Apart from a few out- standing exceptions like William the Conqueror's Domesday Book and Charlemagne's Breviary, there were few attempts at census-' taking in mediaeval times. The prejudice against the census, in fact, prevailed until comparatively recently. In 1753 an eminent member of the British House of Commons, in speaking against a motion to take a census, said: "I did not believe that there wus any set of men, or indeed any individual of the human species, so piTsumptuous or so abandoned to make the proposal we have just heard.

I look upon it as ominous and Xcar lest some public misIuUuuc ut aa epi 1 THE EYE i THENATIOA $I000-2FWEANDHOOStL- OOW IF YOU DO NT ANSWER vuvr FOR THE THIRD Tltlt ruuKAGEMAMM, 1Un nUChf do you WEIGH TOO? ITS wo believed that in the last decade Ontario and Quebec industrially have little more than held their own in proportion to the growth of the Dominion. The prairie West has forged ahead. British Columbia, it is believed, has quadrupled her industries. Population follows industry, and the new census probably will show a great gain in the West in comparison with the East. Consider the consequences.

The census will reflect the shift in population with minute accuracy. Representation in Parliament will be based upon the new census figures. PARLIAMENT MAY BE MADE LARGER. Tresent estimates place population of Canada in excess of 10,000,000. This means a House of Commons of about 275 members, instead of 243 as at present.

Phenomenal growth will bring sixteen out of the thirty new seats to the West. British Columbia will have eighteen seats instead of fourteen; Alberta twenty instead of sixteen; Saskatchewan twenty-six instead of tfA Hy-one; Manitoba twenty instead of In the next. Parliament the West will hold 30 per cent, of the voting strength instead of 27 per cent, as at present. The centre of political power will swing westward, the consequences will be far-reaching. The West is freer from party loyalties; prospects of a new agrarian movement will -appear brighter.

Reforms long desirod west of the Great Lakes will find more advocates; the needs of the West will be forced more emphatically upon the attention of the older provinces. But the degree of this trend will remain unknown until the census is taken and the reports completed. Other aspects of the na'ionnl stock-taking will be eagerly awaited. What of the Canadian blood-stream? Is our population increasing naturally or by influx of immigration? Where is the immigration coming from? To what extent are foreign-born being assimilated? What will be the racial background of the Canadian of 1970? Will he be Anglo-Saxon? The trends in the" past forty years are clear in each case. Few people know the copious transfusions of non-Anglo-Saxon blood which have passed into our national stream.

Irt 1881, when Sir John A. Macdonald was in the heydey of power, 80 per cent, of Canadians were native born, Anglo-Saxon or Fronch-Canadian; 11 per cent, were British, born; 3 per cent, foreign. Bear these percentages in mind. In 1891, 6 per cent, were native born; 10 per cent. British: 4 per cent, aiica.

la 1211, 77 per cent, native bom; AFTER BE YOU 1 I 3i: demical distemper should follow the numbering." The credit of being the first to take a modern census belongs to Canada. The year was 1666, the census that of New France. revealed less than 4000 Canadians. Two hundred and sixty-flve years later there will be another census of Canada, and the infant of 1666 will be disclosed in 1931 as a young giant; shouldering forward among the nations of the world. The purposes for which census are taken have varied.

In ancient times the census was to reveal war strength. Later the census-takers framed questions to show distribution of wealth so monarchs could tax the rich. In Canada, after Confederation the reason for the census was to determine representation in the -Dominion House of Commons. -Under the British North America Act, Quebec is given sixty-five seats and the representation of the other provinces is to be worked out pro rata, according to each census. Application of this principle is very simple.

After each census, the population of Quebec. is di-, vided by sixty-five. This gives the unit of representation. By taking the unit and dividing it into the population of other provinces their representation is determined. But today this is no longer the real reason for taking a national census.

Gradually the questions asked by census enumerators have been extended to include all manner of data -essential to the conduct of trade, the framing of federal and provincial policies. Information is taken of vital consequence to every Canadian. It is1 no longer a matter of counting heads. The census of today records our progress, spiritually, intellectually, commercially; dis- closes what sort of person Jack Canuck is becoming, what sort of blood courses through his veins, what language paeses his lips; reveals, trends of population, the rise and wane in the political influence of different sections. In a word, the censuscross-sections national life.

POPULATION CENTRE MOVING WEST? What will the 1931 census show? Will trends of 1911 and 1921 have gained depth and momentum? WilJ they have diminished? Will we have abandoned traditional objectives and, as it were, unknowingly be marching to other nnd different, perhaps less desirable, destinies? Take population. In the first two decades of this century, the centre of manufarturing and population was along the St. Lawrence waterway. 1921 rnau indicated a swing at industrial poi'uiatiuu Ut the WeL It is JUST TOO BAD' 7W: CENSUS I 3 per cent. British; 12 per rent, alien.

In the percentage of native and British born was still falling rapidly and the alien was rising. These statistics apply to the country us a whole, but some provinces hold more alien born than others. In in 11)21, 20 per cent, of the population were alien born; in Alberta, 29 per in British Columbia, 19 per cent. There were about 1,000,000 non-British foreign born in Canada in 1921 about one in every nine of population. But birth classification no longer reveals the degree of foreign blood infiltration.

Many native born are of foreign stock the first generation. We know that in 1921 the Canadian population comprised the blood of almost every race and nationality under the sun Austrian, Belgian, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Finn, Galician, German, Greek, Dutch, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Slovak, Norwegian, Swedish, Polish, Roumanian, Swiss, Ukrainiun, Syrian, Turk, West Indian, Japanese, Chinese. Are we assimilating this alien blood? Is the melting-pot doing its stuff, or are the different races maintaining their national strains? If assimilating, is the quality of the Canadian breed being impaired? IS MELTING-POT DOING ITS STUFF? No criticism of foreign-born ('unadiuns is irtended in this article. What in suggested is that it is of vital interest to Canadians ai a nation to know what is happening to the blood-stream. In the forthcoming census, there will be a special division for third-generation Canadian', but the government will not give way to the agitation for the abolition of questions covering racial origin.

No matter how lonjr your ancestors have lived in Canada you will be compelled to state the basic raeiul blood of your father. The facts already given ae from the l'Jl census. Ten years have passed twenty millions have been epent on immigration. What is the recult? The 1931 census will give the answer. But perhaps a better way of judging tut density of non-British, and French-Cana WILL ON at 1 77te Canariian census ferAer next year will ask the people of Canada at leant four new tela of question, in addition to those of 1921.

There will be one teries about third generation Canadians, but the government will still seek information on racial origins. Another important series of questions will be directed to the merchants, wholesale and retail, as to their business, turnover and number of fin-ployees. A third will centre on nnemplay- vient, all being asked how long they have been working and how many'days a year. The fourth will be based on agriculture. By GRANT DEXTER.

rTT TT-, 01t i i l. of midnieht. Jack Canuck will take stock of his family. In reality, if not in fact, it will be as if an incredibly large photograph were momentary flood of light 4hrown across the Dominion from Cape Breton to Vancouver Island. We will be revealed for precisely what we are our age, education, racial origin, birthplace; whether single or married, divorced; where and how we live, what we own, what we work at and how much we earn.

The record will reflect our lives at the instant of midnight. If you die at one minute past midnight, you will be shown as living: if born one second after the appointed hour, you will be considered as not living. There is, of course, no camera large enough to focus 3000 miles of territory, ten millions of people, scores of millions of domestic animals; there is no lens capable of recording the innumerable facts about each individual which will be demanded. But the function of the camera Will be discharged by 11,000 specially-instructed enumerators, and the house-to-house canvas they make will cost the national treasury $2,000,000. These men will begin work on the morning of June 1, will not stop until everyone living within Canada hits been docketed.

if WILL BE CANADA'S SEVENTH CENSUS. In this way will be taken the seventh cehsus of Canada. Months will be needed to sort out, collate the information. Batteries of delicate calculators the most, modern of machinery will be used. Finally, about one year hence, the results will be published.

Another volume will have been added to the life story of this country; another national pulse-beat cardiographed. i For many thousand of Canadians-ccnsus-takiug will be new They may dian population is by studying the race and language trends of paut census. Consider the languages, spoken in Canada. Ten years ago out of 6,000.000 citizens, 4,000,000 spoke English, 1,750,000 spoke French, The remaining 750,000 spoke thirty-two different languages. Fifty thousand spoke only Chinese and Japanese; 225,000 spoke only German, Dutch or spoke Italian; 85,000 Ukrainian; 80,000 Yiddish; 38,000 Polish.

This indicates that our non-British and French-Canadian, population is concentrated in little national groups. The Orientals are in British Columbia; Mennonite German; in Manitoba and Saskatchewan; Italians in Ontario; Ukrainians in Saskatchewan and British Columbia. But consider this fact: In 1921, persons In Canada-of ten years and older were wholly illiterate and 201,000 of them were Canadian citizens and cast ballots in federal elections. There were 161,000 children of school age growing up without education of any kind, and as many more receiving education for a short period each year. Since 1921 more than one billion dollars have been spent, on education, Compulsory school attendance obtains in every province.

hat success has been achieved? The census will show. (Continued on I'age i'J Contents of (Uliis Issue Canada's Census Slonte and Jack Mother Church Anniverntinj Hooks t'ntpii I'age Turkey's Ilurem Pacific and the Great War Setc af H. Hinterland Japan Today Let tern to the Editor i.