ENG-1961 — Page 35

20

REVIEW

operators would be of small assistance in the task of punching and verifying three million eighty-column cards, nor would it be a simple matter to recruit, train and accommodate the necessary number of operators to punch and verify on this scale in a reason- able period after census day. Two hundred skilled operators each with twelve months' experience might have completed the task in six weeks, but it would not have been easy to engage fifty operators with twelve days' experience, to say nothing of twelve months. . . . The solution was mark sensing. This is a system of marking cards by a special pencil in such a way that the punching machine can sense the marks (by electrically conductive brushes) translate the marks into a predetermined pattern of punched holes, after which the punched cards are fed into the sorter-counter machines as usual. This system has been used successfully in several countries including Australia and Canada, but it was a new venture for Hong Kong and it was necessary to invent a Cantonese name for the process. The marking was done in the field by enumerators, each enumerator marking the cards not for himself but for a colleague, so that the marking stage could be combined with a complete check by another person of every entry on every schedule. This proved to be the most arduous part of the enumerators' work, but it meant that when the completed schedules arrived at census headquarters, four days after census day, they were accompanied by the marked cards and the machines could start work im- mediately.

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In the films and other publicity material emphasis was laid on two points: the guarantee of secrecy for all personal details, and the use of census material for planning purposes. It was easy enough to put over the obvious fact that the Colony must not only have enough homes, schools and hospitals but it must have them in the right places. If the census is to be of value in such planning it must include everybody.

A citizen who for some reason objects to participating in a census can usually avoid it if he tries hard enough. The fare to Macau is not high, and if he takes a trip on census eve he is out of the census. He can achieve the same effect still more economi- cally by hiring a sampan to go fishing just outside territorial waters. This sort of evasion does not worry the census-takers so long as