Census of Manufactures Image Navigation

This section describes the structure of a CMF manuscript. This is done using the 1850 manuscript, but is similar for the 1860, 1870, and 1880 General Schedule manuscripts. Here is the entire example image:

The very top contains information about the location of the establishments listed, including State, County and Township.

The next section contains column headers that describe the various pieces of information that the census marshal obtained from the establishment. These are the source of the original variables available in the Census of Manufactures microdata.

Below this, each establishment’s information was recorded in rows and in columns. A single establishment can occupy more than one row since one establishment might have many materials it takes in, power it uses, and products it creates.

This is the basic format of the 1850-1880 general schedule manuscripts. The special schedule manuscripts differ in format. The following example is of special schedules 3 and 4, boots/shoes and leather.

At the very top of the manuscript it is stated which special schedules it includes.

Directly under, the location of the establishments included on the manuscript is recorded.

There are two schedules and two sections for each schedule on each manuscript for special schedules 3-12. Here we have 1) Boots and Shoes and 2) Leather.

There are many more columns in these manuscripts than in the general one, and are tailored to the specific industry.

In these special schedules establishments usually take up one line across the two sections.