The Census as an Intrusion of Privacy
A scathing editorial critique of the 1890 Census, calling government inquiries into property and health a 'meddling' breach of private life.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Great governments frequently overdo things as much as common, every-day private individuals. Just at this juncture, the government is about to overdo things in the matter of questions which the census enumerators will be required to ask. One is concerning mortgages on property with which the government has no concern whatever. It is part and parcel of that nosey, prying, peeking-into-other-peoples-business disposition which is so characteristic of the aggravating Paul Pry element. Another grossly important question is whether the person interrogated has any acute or chronic disease. Apart from its impertinence, this sort of inquisition is absurd and even idiotic. No statistical result of any possible value can flow from it, because the majority of people will not give correct answers, and secondly because they cannot.
“It is part and parcel of that nosey, prying, peeking-into-other-peoples-business disposition which is so characteristic of the aggravating Paul Pry element.”
This 1890 screed mirrors modern debates over the balance between data collection for public policy and individual privacy rights. The tone, which frames government outreach as 'Paul Pry' (a nosey stock character), captures the era's fierce suspicion of centralized bureaucratic authority.
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