ENG-1961 — Page 23

REVIEW

educational system enthusiasm was expressed for the census and many principals gave the strongest encouragement to their teachers, and the boys and girls in their senior classes, to join the census army. The University, the Post-Secondary Colleges and nearly every well-known secondary school contributed a few of their staff and the pick of their students. Even those working for an examination were not reluctant to sign on, knowing that their census experience would give them the answer to at least one question in at least one paper. The Civil Aid Services also co-operated splendidly and adjusted their training programme to release as many members as possible for census work. Units of the Royal Hong Kong Defence Force found their programme more difficult to adjust, but gave what help they could. The Kaifong Associations in Hong Kong and Kowloon and the rural committees in the New Territories also assisted by recommending suitable people from their localities. There were some civil servants, and at least one 'taipan'.. and so by degrees the score was complete, and on the appointed day 13,174 enumerators and 505 chief enumerators swung into action.

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They included some specialists. The armed forces provided a sufficient number of enumerators to cover everyone living in service establishments, whether soldier, soldier's family or civilian em- ployee. The prisons, the major hospitals and all police stations and barracks were likewise 'censed' by their own staff. Also the census of the fishing people was assisted by the loan of some enumerators from the fishery co-operatives. An attempt was made to arrange similarly for religious communities, but this failed and convents and monasteries were counted without any difficulty by ordinary enumerators, specially briefed on the rules of the com- munity where this was necessary.

And so to the threshold of the census itself. How was the census taken and what did it reveal? The full technical answers to these questions belong naturally to the Census Report and not here. But as the work of numbering and classifying the people took one or more of the 'census army's' peaceful recruits into every Hong Kong home and to the fireside, or even sometimes the bedside, of every member of our community, a description of the whole