Sugar Planter [West Baton Rouge, LA], March 31, 1860
Instructions for marshals and assistants in taking the next census are nearly prepared. The modifications from those of 1850 will be slight. A compliance with the recommendations of the New York Chamber of Commerce, regarding commercial statistics, is not deemed practicable.—The importance of information about internal commerce is fully appreciated by the Census Bureau, but no method of collecting that which is reliable, through the census, has been discovered. The multiplicity of exchanges which products and manufactures undergo in the course of sale, resale and transportation from one end of the Union to the other, renders an exact computation of the value of domestic commerce impossible. It is estimated that the cost of taking the census this year will reach fifteen hundred thousand dollars, and the enumeration will exceed thirty-one millions of people. Superintendent Kennedy intends to have returns complete in less than three months from the 1st of July.—They will be laid before Congress next session, so that an appointment law may be passed at once. This, however, will not be in season to act upon the ratio for the Thirty-seventh Congress, as a majority of its members will have been elected previous to the commencement of the next session, but it will enable those States whose Legislatures meets biennially to apportion their districts in ample time for the election of members of the Thirty-eighth Congress.