27 Sep. - 3 Oct. 2001
Issue No.553
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 27 Sep. - 3 Oct. 2001 Issue No.553 |
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Al-Ahram:
A Diwan of contemporary life (409)
Egypt's 1927 census encountered many of the problems that had cropped up in previous head counts. Illiteracy was still widespread and traditional apprehension about revealing personal details to others, especially to government authorities, was rock hard. Still, the government was determined to get things right that year, calling the endeavour a patriotic duty. It deployed thousands of census takers around the country and fined those who did not cooperate. For its part, Al-Ahram came up with what became a popular contest for readers to see who would come closest to guessing how many people were in the country. Professor Yunan Labib Rizk* writes on how Egypt kept count
Stand up and be counted
Census takers in 1927 encountered problems when attempting to determine the nationalitiy of tribal members who lived along the Egyptian-Sudanese border
The first census in Egypt was taken in 1882. The second, taken 15 years later, was more precise since the process was institutionalised through the creation of a census department within the Ministry of Finance and a staff of "no less than 150 specialised employees and inspectors who were appointed to cover all provincial directorates."
From 1897 onward, the Census Department conducted a census every 10 years, regardless of the circumstances. Thus, the 1907 census took place at a time of economic crisis. In 1917 World War I was in progress and in 1927, the subject of this episode of the Chronicle, the census encountered another set of difficulties. Two more censuses were held in the years ending in the number seven -- 1937 and 1947. However, the tripartite invasion of 1956 disrupted the tradition and the 1967 war perpetuated the disruption.
The Royal Census of 1927 encountered many of the problems that cropped up earlier. Evidently, by the time a decade had elapsed so, too, did peoples' recollection of the procedures to follow and officials, aided by Al-Ahram, found it necessary to refresh peoples' memories.
A "warm-up" campaign kicked off three months before the actual tally. On 19 January 1927, Al-Ahram published a pep talk which Mr Craig, the director of the Census Department, gave to his staff in the Savoy Hotel the previous day. Craig stressed the importance of the task the census takers were preparing to undertake and outlined the demographic situation in Egypt. Egypt was still primarily an agrarian society, he said, "however, agricultural land is limited and if the opportunities to improve cultivation are favourable, there comes a point beyond which our best efforts can do no more." He then alerted his audience to the problem of rural to urban migration, particularly to Cairo and Alexandria. In the capital, he said, population density per square mile had roughly doubled over the previous 10 years, a situation that brought "grave consequences because the inhabitants of Cairo do not obtain sufficient nourishment and the poor here are worse off than the poor in the countryside."
Nevertheless, Craig continued, the census takers' task would not be easy. Illiteracy was still widespread and many people did not know their actual age. However, he stressed, it is vital to compile information as accurately as possible "in order to determine the size of the nation's labour force, the quantities of foodstuffs needed for the population and the needs for public education." He added that it was also important to know how many foreigners resided in the country "due to the privileges they enjoy" (under the Capitulations System).
In its following day's edition, Al-Ahram explained how the census would be conducted. First, it wrote, the Census Department had engaged 90,000 "of the finest government employees" to participate in the procedures without remuneration. Those who were selected, it continued, should consider this a great honour and, therefore, "should pursue the tasks incumbent upon them joyfully, out of the conviction that they are involved in a patriotic endeavour and that regardless of the amount of their precious time that they devote to this they will be performing a public service and furthering the welfare of the nation." Unfortunately, when the time came, the spirit of dedication proved not as strong as Al-Ahram expected, as the majority of those temporarily engaged as census workers sought ways to evade the extra responsibilities for which they would receive no extra pay.
Al-Ahram also informed readers that for the first time electrically operated machines would be used for the tallying. "One cannot behold these machines without being overcome by a sense of awe," the newspaper enthused. "They can sort the population according to gender, nationality, religion and age, then take these categories and tally them according to any other information that might be required. And they perform these operations with a speed and efficiency that no human being could possibly equal."
Because Egyptians are traditionally apprehensive about revealing personal details to others, especially to government authorities, a new provision was introduced into the census law, stating that "any census worker or employee of the General Census Authority who reveals any information given to him shall be penalised by imprisonment or a fine of up to LE20." The deterrent was formidable; LE20 at the time would have constituted a significant portion of a civil servants' annual salary."
However, census workers were not the only people to be targeted by the law. Officials reminded the population of the following stipulation: "Any individual residing in Egyptian territory, whether permanently or temporarily, who refuses to submit a completed census form or who deliberately furnishes false information shall be subject in accordance with the Census Law to a fine of up to LE1 or internment of up to a week. This law applies to all Egyptians and foreigners."
As the census approached, an awareness-raising campaign moved into high gear. Al-Ahram contributed to efforts with its "call to the census," appearing on 4 February 1927. Opening with the exhortation that cooperating with the census was "a sacred duty incumbent upon all Egyptians," the newspaper went on to enumerate the benefits the nation would accrue from the accumulation of accurate statistics. It was essential, it said, for food supply. Population figures "will enable the government to determine the quantities every individual consumes of domestic produce and imported goods and, hence, the quantities of every type of foodstuff the country needs." In a similar vein, "Only an accurate census can guide the government to the appropriate path to take with regard to the national system of education." After listing several more advantages, the article concluded, "The peoples of civilised nations attach great importance to the census and cooperate fully with their governments and census workers in the fulfilment of the necessary tasks. Indeed, such is the value they accord to the results that they are emblazoned in the press in the manner of other major events."
To supplement their efforts, census officials appealed to the Ministry of Awqaf (religious endowments) to participate in the campaign to urge Egyptians to cooperate with the census workers. The ministry drafted a text of what was said during Friday prayers on 18 February 1927 and which Al-Ahram also relayed to its readers. Perhaps the most important passage is that which read: "If it is an act of piety to help one's brother in a manner which serves his welfare, then certainly to assist the government in resolving the problems of the nation so as to ensure its advancement and prosperity is a greater and nobler deed. We must demonstrate our devotion to the government by providing the information required by the census and we must let honesty be our guide, for to cheat the government in this matter is to cheat the people of the nation, and cheating is an odious offense forbidden by our religion."
In spite of these efforts, when the day of the census came the Census Department had much to wring its hands over. The first difficulty was the lack of census workers, as we observe from successive news items in Al-Ahram. Although the census authority had asked the various government authorities to recruit census workers from among their staff, the response was not enthusiastic. Undoubtedly, a major disincentive was financial, for in one news item Al-Ahram reports that the census authority promised to request the Cairo and Alexandria tramway authorities to exempt the census workers from transportation fares. It went on to note that some 7,000 free tram passes would be needed for this purpose in Cairo and Alexandria respectively.
The offer of free transportation, however, did not do the trick. On 27 January 1927, the Ministry of Finance released a statement, published in Al-Ahram, revealing that large numbers of government employees had begun "to give various excuses in order to evade this national duty, and most of these excuses are highly implausible."
When it was proven that the carrot would not work, the ministry of finance resorted to the stick. It reminded government employees of the penalties under the Census Law for evading appointments as census workers, although it simultaneously stressed that it hoped it would not have to pursue that course of action and that civil servants would be motivated by "their dedication to public service and their sense of honour." The ministry further issued a circular to other government agencies instructing them "not to take into consideration any complaint submitted by the many who seek to be exempted from census duty."
Eventually a force of civil servants was grudgingly pressed into service only to find other causes for grievance. One census worker wrote to Al-Ahram to complain of the behaviour of "commoners" towards census takers who, he stressed, "have a sense of dignity and honour." He urged the government to take all measures possible "to spare us this ill treatment." On the other hand, there were hundreds who complained that the areas they were assigned to canvass were located at great distances from their homes and that the tramway operators had refused to exempt them from transportation fares. "What sin have we committed to oblige us to pay these fares out of our own pocket in the course of performing a public service?" pleaded one writer. Although the census authority had earlier pledged to secure free tram passes for the census workers, the most it could obtain from the tramway authority was a reduction in fares from six millimes to four.
In addition to work conditions, the census takers encountered a host of other practical and technical problems. There arose, for example, the question of how to categorise the "former Ottoman subjects" who in previous censuses had been counted as Egyptians since, at the time, Egyptians were still nominally Ottoman subjects. The confusion prompted "an Egyptian of Ottoman origin" to write to Al-Ahram urging parliament to hasten the passage of the Nationality Law in order to resolve the status of those who were treated "neither as Egyptians or as foreigners." The Nationality Law was only passed two years later in 1929.
A second problem, one with important political ramifications, entailed compiling statistics on "the Egyptian tribes located under the administrative authority of the government of Sudan." The tribes lived in that portion of the southeastern desert below the lines the British drew to demarcate the administrative borders of Sudan. Although Al-Ahram reports that officials in the Egyptian ministry of finance approached the Sudanese representative in Cairo with the purpose of facilitating the task of the Egyptian census takers in those parts, the newspaper does not inform us of any agreement that was reached. One suspects that the Sudanese authorities were reluctant to help the Egyptian Census Department. Since the assassination of Governor-General of Sudan Lee Stack in 1924 the British were determined to transform the administrative boundaries between Egypt and Sudan into national boundaries, despite Egyptian claims to the territory, a policy that sowed the seeds for what later developed into the dispute over the Halaib.
Census day also happened to coincide with the mawlid of Sidi Abul-Muatiin Damietta, for which occasion some 10,000 people arrived to attend religious festivities. With "some people camping in tents, others staying at friends or relatives and still others sleeping in the streets and alleyways," census workers were confounded. Compounding their difficulties on that day was the fact that several thousand visited Shata, a desert area located several miles north of Damietta. If census workers did not throw up their hands in dismay, the statistics they compiled would have undoubtedly been in complete disarray.
Finally, there were hundreds of individual cases that would also have skewed the accuracy of the census. One imagines that many census workers encountered situations such as those in Alexandria who complained that when they were canvassing the Ramla neighbourhood several Italian women slammed the door in their faces and shouted abuse. Hopefully, not many found themselves in the situation of another census worker in Alexandria whose route led him to a family that had lost their daughter on that day. "He was received with curses and told that he had caused the young child's death by 'putting the evil eye on her.'" Then there was the unfortunate census recruit who, in the line of duty, unwittingly entered a hashish den and was forced to flee for his life.
Such impediments, however, did not derail "the process of assessing the number of people in the realm," and as people awaited the outcome, Al-Ahram came up with an idea that gave the 1927 census a special flavour. On 19 February, the newspaper announced it was holding a special contest for which it had earmarked LE130 to be awarded to the winners, with LE100, LE20 and LE10 as first, second and third prizes. All readers had to do was predict "the size of the population in Egypt according to the census that was taken last night," write their answers "clearly and legibly" on the form provided for that purpose in the newspaper and send it to Al-Ahram. Contest rules stipulated that answers that were not written on the form provided would not be eligible and that no more than one answer could be written on a single form. Employees of Al-Ahram and their relatives were not allowed to take part in the contest.
Obviously, Al-Ahram management expected to sell a lot of newspapers over the next few days. To boost sales further, it reminded readers in a large boldface font the following day that they could submit as many answers as they wished which, of course, meant that contestants had to purchase a newspaper for each form they wanted to submit. The advertisement further promised that pictures of the winners would be published in the newspaper along with "full details about them."
As the day of the draw approached, Al-Ahram announced it had formed a contest committee consisting of top government officials -- the deputy minister of finance, the general-inspector of the census and the superintendent of the General Census Authority -- as well as the editor-in-chief and managing director of Al-Ahram. The newspaper also ensured readers that all precautions were being taken to ensure a fair contest and, specifically, that no-one, particularly census workers, would have advance knowledge of the results. The committee chairman, Hanin Bek Hanin, it reported, had issued instructions that all census results must be delivered to him personally in sealed envelopes. "These will remain sealed until all results are collected, after which they will only be opened in the presence of the committee."
To further stimulate enthusiasm for the contest and to guide participants, Al-Ahram of 26 February listed all previous census results since 1800. In that year, it announced, the population stood at 2.46 million, in 1821 it reached 2.536 million, 4.476 million in 1846, 6.831 million in 1882, 9.734 million in 1897, 11.287 million in 1907 and 12.750 million in 1917.
The campaign was clearly a great success. Under the photo of a postman carrying a large mailbag was a caption saying this was only one of the many bags filled with contest entries to reach Al-Ahram offices and that shortly the committee members would meet, sort through the answers and announce the results.
On 12 March the results of the census were announced. The following day Al-Ahram carried three large photos of the winners who had probably never in their lives imagined that their pictures would one day appear on the front page of Al-Ahram. The winner of the first prize was 23-year-old Boulis Salib, a postal employee in Cairo. His prediction of the 1927 census results was off by only 26 people of the total tally of 14,168,756. Salib must have felt that the whole world smiled with him, for now he could realise his long cherished dream of building a home in Fayoum. Second place winner was Mahmoud Kamel. In his mid-thirties and a resident of Kubri Al-Qubba in Cairo, Mahmoud confessed that he had worked out the answer with the help of a friend and that they would split the LE20 prize money. The winner of the third prize was Mitri Girgis Murqus, 29, a clerk in Shabin Al-Qanatir national court. Murqus was not pleased to have come in third. He also told the Al-Ahram reporter that after the results of the contest were announced and his picture appeared in the paper, friends and relatives started to press him for financial favours to a tune far exceeding the LE10 he had won.
Perhaps Al-Ahram's preoccupation with the publicity of the contest results kept it from presenting readers with a comprehensive breakdown of the 1927 census figures as compared to those of 1917. All it did was to relay a London Times article which reported that the population in Egypt increased by 11.1 per cent between 1917, when the population stood at 12,718,255, and 1927, as opposed to a 12.3 per cent population growth over the previous decade. These results, the article concluded, indicated that Egypt had begun to feel the pressure of population growth upon its resources which, in turn, "has led to a slowing down in the natural rate of population increase."
One reader felt that this analysis was insufficient and charged that the newspaper, in its obsession with its publicity campaign, had forgotten that the census was "a tool for empirically assessing the state of the nation and a mirror that we must use in order to learn where society's flaws and blemishes are located." Shortly afterwards, Al-Ahram did provide some further analysis. It observed, for example, that there were more females than males throughout the country except on the Red Sea coast. It also took issue with the Times contention that the slowing down in population growth was due to anxiety over the pressure on resources. Rather, it held, it was due to "the spread of addiction to cocaine and similar drugs, to hashish and similar stimulants, and to alcoholic beverages and the various appetisers and brands that induce one to consume more."
Finally, the newspaper noted that the official population statistics for the capital were inaccurate. Whereas they had been assessed at 1.1 million, this figure failed to take into account the suburbs in Giza and Qalioubiya which, had they been taken into account, would have brought the actual population of the Cairo to more than a million and a half. Curiously, the writer did not feel that this was an ominous sign. Indeed, he urged the government to adopt an ambitious demographic reform programme in order to encourage population growth in the nation's capital. Little did he realise that his hope would come true -- beyond his wildest dreams.
* The author is a professor of history and head of Al-Ahram History Studies Centre.
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