Word: censuses
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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After just a few days of stoppage, and with parts of the system still operating, the effects of the shutdown appeared to be little short of devastating. The nation's postal system handles 270 million pieces of mail a day and moves everything from bank drafts to draft notices. Census questionnaires were scheduled to go out to every American family this week. No Government agency or business?and few individuals ?could escape the impact of the mail strike. Postal service, once taken for granted, suddenly affected everyone by its absence...
...stroke of 12 one night this month, church bells rang, sirens wailed and gongs boomed the length and breadth of Ghana. The noise signaled neither a national holiday nor a sneak air attack. It was meant simply to remind Ghanaians that a new census was about to begin...
While the U.S. early next month will take its 19th census since 1790, heads are also being counted in some 90 other countries and territories-from the U.S.S.R. to Greenland-during this decennial year. When all the figuring is done, roughly half of the world's 3.6 billion people will have been accounted for. Census takers traveling on foot and horseback, by dugout canoe, reindeer sled and helicopter will collect the raw statistics that will enable developing countries to chart their next five-year plans and industrial nations to study (among other things) the migratory patterns of their people...
Machiavellian Device. First undertaken as long ago as 3800 B.C. by the Babylonians and in 3000 B.C. by the Chinese, head counts have often proved unpopular because of their association in the public mind with taxation and conscription. When a national census was proposed to the British Parliament some 200 years ago, an enraged M.P. described the project as "totally subversive to the last remains of English liberty." Only in 1801 was the idea reluctantly accepted. The notion that the census is a Machiavellian device designed to enhance the power of the government is still strong; Machiavelli did, in fact...
...times, people sometimes had to travel to their birthplace or family seat to be counted, as in the case of Mary and Joseph's eventful journey to Bethlehem. In the present day, many countries order their citizens to remain at home for a specified period to await the census taker. All Cuba will be virtually paralyzed on census day this year except for ambulance drivers and census takers. In Mexico, fines for leaving one's house unoccupied on the vital day, Jan. 28, ran as high...