Friday, October 9th. On this date in 1873, a sturdy and somber-looking building opened its doors to admit 17 long-term residents. Then it promptly closed and locked those doors. With the opening of the Indiana Reformatory Institution for Women and Girls in Indianapolis, the country had its first maximum-security penitentiary built for and managed by women. Formerly, female convicts were imprisoned in male facilities where they suffered abuse from male guards and inmates. The reformatory remains locked for business to this day, now named the Indiana Women’s Prison. It houses around 430 of the approximately 111,000 women in federal and state prisons. Overall, there are around 1.36 million prisoners in state facilities. America’s state governments spend over $48 billion per year on their corrections systems.Profile America is in its19th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.
Saturday, October 10th. Something that we all take for granted made its appearance on this date in 1933, when the first household detergent — named Dreft, and still in production — went on sale. The chemistry of making soap had changed little over hundreds of years, until shortages of fats for making soap during World War I sparked research. Detergents really took off following World War II, and by 1953, their sales had passed those of traditional soaps. Now, detergents have all but replaced soap-based products for laundry, dishwashing, and household cleaning, and most soaps for personal hygiene also contain some detergents. Some 637 U.S. manufacturers produce $23 billion worth of detergents and soaps each year. You can find current data on the country’s economy by downloading the ‘America’s Economy’ mobile application at <www.census.gov/mobile>.
Sunday, October 11th. National Hispanic Heritage Month ends on Thursday this week. The annual commemoration, beginning every September 15, can often treat Hispanics as a single, undifferentiated population. But the roughly 55-million Hispanic residents in America hail from a great variety of nations and cultures in the Caribbean, or south of the Rio Grande River. It’s well known the greatest number come from Mexico — over 33 million. But nearly 5 million are of Puerto Rican origin, and another 1.9 million trace their roots to Cuba. About the same number are from El Salvador. Colombia and Guatemala are claimed by over 1 million residents each. The Hispanic nation with the fewest U.S. immigrants is Paraguay, with just over 22,500. You can find more facts about America’s people, places and economy, from the American Community Survey, at <www.census.gov>.