CENSUS: 130 Million Plus

From Washington came provocative news last week. Its cud could and would be chewed for the next decade by manufacturers, economists, biologists, social planners, realtors, politicians, dreamers, speculators. It was the near-final figures on the 1940 Census.†

Cherubic, soft-voiced William Lane Austin, director of the Bureau of the Census, met newsmen in the long, hot conference room of the Department of Commerce Building and made public his figures. Total population of the U. S. as of April 1, he announced, was 131,409,881. To his report of last spring’s painstaking national nose count, he had few remarks to add. Chiefly he wanted to focus attention on what he considered the Census’ most striking fact: from 1930 to 1940 the U. S. had shown the lowest rate of increase in population in 150 years.

The growth of the U. S. has been one of the wonders of the Western world. Its population jumped from 2,945,000 in 1780 to some 30,000,000 just before the Civil War. Since 1880, the decennial rate of increase has declined. Predictions were that the country would reach a static population in 1970-80. Census figures last week bore out the prophecy. The rate of increase in 1920-30 was 16.1%; in 1930-40: 7. Commented Mr. Austin: “We don’t have enough babies and we are not building up with immigration from abroad.” To many this fact had ominous implications. In the past, population growth has gone with national prosperity. Many wondered whether a stationary population would mean a decline in national wealth. Observers speculated about changes in consumer needs, industrial and occupational shifts. Said New York Timesman Luther Huston: “If there are fewer babies and more old people, there may be more doctors, for instance, who specialize in cardiac diseases than in obstetrics. The market for wheel chairs might outsell the market for perambulators.”

Drifts. Another notable fact in the 1940 Census was the unprecedented drift away from industrial areas and urban centres. Only one big city upped its rate of increase: Washington, D. C., with its swelling Government employe lists. Many cities showed an actual decrease: Philadelphia, Newark, N. J., Boston, Cleveland, San Francisco. Reasons for this urban “flattening out”: the depression; a renascence of the old-fashioned U. S. passion to own a home, dig in the earth; the migration of city workers to the suburbs.

Streams. The Census showed that certain rivers of migration, begun in the decade before last, still flowed on. The great exodus was from Oklahoma and the other drought-area States in the Great Plains tier (see map). Fastest-growing State was Florida, where sunshine, bathing beauties, vistas of white sand and palm trees, pleasure domes and gambling dens continued to lure the wealthy, the retired and the relaxed. Second in the rate of population growth was New Mexico, where discouraged Okies, who could get no farther, had bogged down. Third fastest-growing State: California, another sun-worshipers’ Mecca. Fastest-growing region: the South.

Politicians were the people most immediately interested in population shifts: they wondered how much reapportioning would come out of it. The representation in the House, limited now by the 1930 Census to 435 members, is based on the Census figures, shifts with them.

Cost of the Census (which required 108,700 enumerators): $55,000,000.

† Final, rechecked figures will be announced by the President the first week in January.