HOLY COW! HISTORY: How a city scammed the Census Bureau

City Hall was sweating bullets in the spring of 1900. The 12th Census of the United States would be taken on June 1, and the municipality was in serious trouble. An up-and-coming new kid some 50 miles down the road was overtaking it in population, commerce and influence.

Today, St. Joseph, Missouri (St. Joe to locals) calls itself the place “where the Pony Express began and Jesse James ended.” (The legendary outlaw was gunned down there in 1882.) What began in the 1820s as a trading post nestled between the Missouri River and the Blacksnake Hills mushroomed into a frontier boomtown. Steamboat traffic, combined with the western terminus of the new Iron Horse, increased its size and prosperity as a major jumping-off point for settlers heading west.

Then a nearby town set out to give St. Joe a run for its money.

Kansas City, Missouri, gained a major leg up with the construction of the first railroad bridge across the wide Missouri River in 1869. That led to an explosion of business in the livestock and transportation sectors, igniting a rivalry between the neighbors. And the faster Kansas City grew, the less friendly it became.

By 1880, KC’s 55,800 had overtaken St. Joe’s 32,400 population. In 1890, Kansas City eclipsed it with 132,700 people to 52,300. Now, with the 1900 census looming, St. Joe’s city fathers feared another bad headcount could doom their community.

So apparently, someone cooked the books.

Census-takers came up with creative ways to inflate St. Joe’s numbers. For instance, in one such trick from that era used elsewhere, a home where five people lived was reported as a boardinghouse where 50 people resided. Such shenanigans could artificially pump up the population to a respectable figure, thus keeping the city competitive.

When the figures were released in Census Bulletin No. 11 on Oct. 25, the results immediately raised eyebrows. St. Joe now boasted nearly 103,000 citizens, an amazing 96.8% increase that wildly outpaced the 23.4% growth spurt that brought Kansas City to 163,800 folks. The race was still afoot!

Skeptics immediately smelled a rat.

At this point in the story, local lore adds a fascinating twist. According to news accounts in St. Joe, but not documented in D.C., a government inspector was dispatched to look into the suspicious stat. City movers and shakers sensed danger. So they hatched a daring cover-up.

A large delegation from the Commercial Club (a forerunner of the chamber of commerce) supposedly greeted the inspector when his train rolled into Union Station. Recognizing that he was tired after a long train ride from Memphis, Tennessee, they offered him some refreshment before getting down to business. Refreshment of the liquid variety.

Once the inspector was “comfortably numb,” he was escorted to Fifth and Edmond streets, the transfer point for St. Joe’s trolley system and one of the busiest spots in town. Told it was just a typical city intersection, the man was taken around by carriage and returned to the same spot from a different direction. And then again.

In all, he was shown the same hustle-and-bustle scene from different vantage points four or five times. By the time he was loaded back onto a train for the next leg in his journey, the tipsy inspector was convinced St. Joseph was, indeed, the thriving metropolis the census had indicated.

Tall tale or not, what happened next is indisputable.

When 1910’s census figures were released, St. Joe’s population had dwindled to 77,403. How could a city that showed no sign of decline shrink by roughly 25% in a decade?

U.S. Rep. Charles F. Booher, whose district included St. Joe, was hopping mad. “The census rolls of the city of St. Joseph were outrageously padded (in 1900),” he thundered on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives on May 19, 1911.

The Democratic representative claimed Republican enumerators, working under a Republican census supervisor, had “padded the census by 25,000 names” in 1900.

In 1914, the Census Bureau demurely admitted St. Joseph’s 1900 enumeration was “evidently incorrect.”

But by then, the damage was done. The intra-city rivalry was over, and Kansas City had won. It listed 248,381 residents in 1910 — a 51.7% increase from 1900 — and went on to get the Chiefs and Royals, host national political conventions and become a recognized major U.S. city.

St. Joe was relegated to runner-up status, its population legitimately peaking at almost 81,000 in 1930, and remained stagnant ever since.  

The 1900 scandal dogged the city for decades. More than half a century later, a 1958 annexation case led the Missouri Supreme Court to conclude, “A curious figure of 102,979 appeared as the 1900 census figure, entirely out of line with all others. All concerned seem to suspect some ‘juggling’ in that figure, and we concur.”

That, it would seem, was putting it mildly.

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