REVIEW
7
waters at the census moment, but leave out everybody, even per- manent residents who at that moment were anywhere abroad.
One of the difficulties of this kind of census is that it has to be done quickly and therefore requires a large force of enumerators. These have to be enrolled, trained, tested, deployed, controlled and finally paid. Field tests showed that a good enumerator in a resettlement estate-the easiest kind of census work, as the estates are compact and orderly and a good deal was known to start with about each family-could tackle five hundred or so in the time available, about ten days, but in tenement areas where people were harder to find three hundred was nearer the mark, and in sparsely-populated rural districts the sheer difficulty of getting about would reduce still further the work of one enumerator. A preliminary estimate made in 1959 was that the population by census day would be about 3.2 million. (This estimate proved to be very accurate). Clearly at least twelve thousand enumerators would be needed, with several hundred chief enumerators and other supervisory staff.
A-good census enumerator needs to be a person of tact and ability. He must have a better than average education but no sense of superiority when interviewing people of lesser education than himself. He needs a good knowledge of his subject and must take a lively and sympathetic interest in the lives of the people he visits, so that he can briefly and clearly explain to them what they have to do and why. Where could twelve thousand such people be found?
This was the first problem. It was difficult to find a solution until somebody thought of the schools. If the census was arranged to fall in vacation time, there might be a sufficient number of professors and tutors, masters and mistresses to conduct the census. And if by any chance there were not enough professors to go round, the ranks could be filled by the brightest of their pupils.
This dream, of course, was not fully realized. Professors and tutors are busy even in vacation time, especially when their univer- sity is celebrating its jubilee and even bright students have holiday tasks to perform. In the rural areas schoolmasters did come for- ward in appreciable strength and at every level in the Colony's