Professor Willard E. Hotchkiss, supervisor of the census in Chicago and Cook County, proposes to organize a campaign of education to teach the people in these parts what the census means and what it does not mean. He regards such a campaign as necessary on account of the ignorance and suspicion prevailing among the masses of the population; especially in "foreign quarters". In a census talk to Chicago businessmen, under the auspices of the Chicago Association of Commerce. Professor Hotchkiss said in part:

"We are going to have difficulty in securing census data from the people, especially the foreigners, because of ignorance and suspicion. The foreigners think [that] everybody who questions them is an official who wants to deport them. All employers should help us overcome these prejudices by telling their employees that the census is a good thing, that it 2will do them no harm, and what its purposes are.

"We are to start the campaign of education. Mrs. Ella Flagg Young, superintendent of schools, is to co-operate, with us, and in every school in Chicago at least one civic lesson is to be devoted to the census so the pupils will know what it means and will go home and tell their parents about it. We are also to hold meetings frequently all over the city to which the people will be invited.

"We are to ask thirty-two questions in taking the census this year. It will be the most complete, and is planned to be the most correct ever taken. There will be 1,100 enumerators in Chicago and 400 in the county districts of the county. We have 5,800 applicants now, so we have all the English enumerators we want, but we are in need of intelligent people who can talk one or more foreign languages."

Professor Hotchkiss is on the right track and should receive the support he 3seeks for his work among our businessmen and others in position to render any assistance. But it would seem that he is not well informed himself as to the difficulties to be met within "foreign quarters". It is true that a large number of fellow-citizens of "native" stock still cling to the archaic notion that this country has an absolute monopoly on popular education and free government in this world of ours. But the dean of the School of Commerce of Northwestern University ought to know better, too, but has preferred to speak in general terms lest he offend some quarters where ignorance does prevail and where altogether too many denizens may well live in dread of deportation. But there are foreigners and "foreigners". In avoiding Scylla the good professor has run his ship on the rock [sic] of Charybdis. To many people his sweeping statement is a gross injustice, not to say insult. As he well knows--because, as dean of the School of Commerce, it is his business to know it--popular education is more advanced in some countries of Europe than with us. There is practically no illiteracy in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Switzerland, and Holland, nor among our "foreigners" from those lands; and in the British Isles, France, 4Belguim, and parts of Austria illiteracy is rapidly disappearing. Also in the field of statistics the European countries referred to are, as Professor Hotchkiss knows, farther advanced than we are here. And those of our people who hail from those countries do not need any particular instruction concerning the character of the census. However, there are "foreigners" in Chicago who need instruction in those matters as well as others, as there may be native-born people who it may not hurt to learn a little more than they know about the scope and purposes of the census. These people should receive attention. Mr. Hotchkiss will obtain the best results of his campaign by massing his forces where ignorance prevails, whether in native or foreign quarters. But no useful purpose will be served by attempting to instruct people who already know what the instructors are to teach them.