WASHINGTON, May 29. - After fifteen months of preparation the preliminary work in connection with taking the twelfth census is practically over, the actual field work commencing on the first day of June.

The work incident to the commencement of the enumeration proper has been the considerable magnitude. Nearly 300 supervisors have been selected, 52,600 eumerators, something over 2,000 special agents; a clerical force is now at work numbering over 1,000, and examinations are in force that will provide some 2,200 more. Over 15,000,000 of schedules have been prepared and sent to different parts of the United States for use in taking the enumeration, and acquiring other facts in connection with the manufacturing and agricultural industries.

In order to bring about these conditions there will have been spent on the first of June about $750,000.

On the morning of June 1 the small army of enumerators will sally forth upon the commencment of the most important census taken during the history of the United States.

The preliminary work that has been undertaken is but a small part of the task that confronts the officials of the census bureau. The field work, now commencing, which will involve the use of all the enumerators and special agents, consisting of nearly 55,000 men, probably will not be finished until in September.

When the returns are made from this vast aggregation of information hunters, the real work of the census will begin. The count of the population will be hurried through so as to complete it by the time congress convenes, in order that a proper apportionment bill may be provided for at the next session of the national legislature. The work of compilation, tabulation, and printing, will follow and this alone will be a work of great magnitude.

It is hoped to finish the principal part of the census work within the next two years. That done, the special subjects connected with the industrial and sociological inquiries will be taken up and disposed of as fast as possible. A much more thorough supervision and enumeration will be undertaken than ever attempted heretofore, involving, of course, an extraordinary expenditure, with a view of a more thorough count of the population in the larger cities. It is not unlikely that the cost of the census, when completed, will be between $15,000,000 and $16,000,000. It is believed, however, that the results, either from a scientific or practical standpoint, in the main will be satisfactory to the people of the country.