Patches

Future CMF data fixes will be included in this section of the data pipeline. This list of patches will continue to grow as we improve the CMF data.

Patch 1: Paul Rhode of the economics department at the University of Michigan was able to decipher some previously unreadable data in Special Schedule 1: Agricultural Implements. This included suggested corrections to firm name, wood material value and total material value. In this patch we simply add in his suggested corrections.

Patch 2: During transcription, we split establishments that engaged in multiple distinct activities. This applied only to 1850–1870, since the 1880 schedule did not list separate products and materials. Mills were by far the most commonly split establishments, as many both sawed lumber and ground grain using similar power and machinery. In about 1.5% of cases, flour mills split from lumber mills were mistakenly classified as lumber mills; this patch corrects those to flour mills.

Patch 3: Occasionally, when we split firms, materials and products were assigned to the wrong establishment. This typically occurred when the census manuscript itself had a misalignment between materials and products, so that splitting based on the recorded line caused items to be attributed to the wrong side of the firm. Because most split establishments were flour or lumber mills, the most common issues involved mismatches between flour/lumber products or materials and the type of mill. In this patch, we identified all affected establishments (170) and reassigned products and materials to the correct establishment.