“During a congressional committee hearing in the late 1960s, as a Census Bureau official told it, a congressman was questioning statisticians from the bureau about the projected scope and costs of the 1970 census. The tenor of his questions was highly critical. Why did the bureau need to ask so many questions? Did not the projected questions constitute an invasion of individual privacy by the government? And why did the census cost so much?

Bureau officials responded patiently to each question, although it was clear that the congressman was unconvinced. Why did the federal government have to get so involved in collecting statistics in the first place, the congressman asked. After all, he continued, whenever he needed statistical information, he just went and looked it up in an almanac.”

– quoted from The American Census: A Social History,
by Margo J. Anderson, 1988