The 2020 Census asks just seven questions. Back in 1910, the census posed 32 questions, with an additional array of questions for farmers. One of those queries asked farmers the value of the products they sold during the previous year.
Since 1790, the official census start date had been either the first Monday of August or June 1. But, for the 1920 census, the Department of Agriculture presumed they would obtain more accurate information about the value of crops if the census were taken on Jan. 1. They feared farmers would forget financial details over the winter.
Congress approved the change without realizing the implications.
Immigration influx
Census 1920 results were released in December of that year, and they surprised the members of Congress.
At that time, there was vibrant opposition to foreigners coming into the U.S. The nation had already banned immigration from Asia, but many of those arrived after 1880 were Catholics and Jews who came from southern and eastern Europe. Many Americans feared they would never assimilate.
The 1920 census results showed that the Northeastern and industrial Midwestern states had grown rapidly, thanks to immigration from Europe. After an interruption for World War I, immigration spiked to 800,000 in 1920.
In response to census results and the unexpected “flood” of immigrants, Congress, in 1921, enacted an Emergency Immigration Quota Act, restricting immigration.
The lost census
That was just the first step in a decadelong controversy involving key issues that shaped the nation. Would there be continued immigration from eastern and southern Europe? Would political power shift to the states with the biggest cities?
The 1920 results would have shifted political power away from the South and away from the agricultural states of the Midwest, to the northeastern states and those states Americans now call the Rust Belt.
Representatives of farm states contended that the new Jan. 1 census date meant that many men who spent most of the year working on farms were counted in cities where they spent just a few winter months.
Southerners in Congress argued that congressional seats should be allocated on the number of citizens only, since this would protect their representation.
Congressmen from growing states emphasized that the Constitution said nothing about citizens. They argued that a constitutional amendment was required to limit congressional apportionment to citizens only.
Northeastern members also pointed to an obscure clause from the 14th Amendment that permitted Congress to diminish a state’s representation if they determined that a state abridged the right of male citizens to vote. Southern states attempted to accomplish that with poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses and refusal to register African Americans.
There was also controversy about which mathematical method to use to allocate seats to states. Different methods assigned different numbers of seats to states.
From 1800 to 1910, Congress had increased its membership after censuses, to prevent states from losing a seat. Vibrant controversy raged about the size of Congress, since different numbers favored different states.
Late in the 1920s, it became clear that Congress was so riven they would never use Census 1920 data to reapportion Congress. In 1929, they enacted legislation specifying which method would be used to allocate seats on the basis of the 1930 count.
Census 1920 is unique, since it was the only one not used for reapportionment.