Some light upon the influences at work may be derived from the comparison between city and country at the south.
| Date. | Children under 5 Years of Age to 1000 Women 15 to 44 Years of Age in the Southern States. | |||
| Cities having at least 25,000 Inhabitants. |
Smaller Cities and Country Districts. | |||
| Negroes. | Whites. | Negroes. | Whites. | |
| 1890 | 319 | 391 | 688 | 665 |
| 1900 | 271 | 374 | 668 | 671 |
The noteworthy inference from these figures is that the proportion of negro children in southern cities was very low and decreasing. In 1890 it was about five-sixths, and in 1900 less than three-fourths of the proportion of children among whites in these cities. The differences in northern cities are equally marked. City life appears to exercise a powerful and increasing influence in reducing the birth-rate among the negroes.
Health.—The prosperity and progress of a population group are indicated, not merely by growth in numbers but also by the longevity of its members. This vitality is roughly measured by the death-rate. Other things being equal, a low and sinking death-rate is evidence of a high and increasing average duration of life. In the United States vital statistics are in charge of the several states and cities, and are often defective or entirely lacking. In 1890 and 1900 the Federal government compiled such as were of importance, and in 1864 an official compilation was made of death-rates of negroes before the war. The results are worth consideration.
| Date. | Negro Deaths. |
Negro Death-rate. |
White Death-rate at same Time and Places. |
| Mainly between 1818–1863 |
106,217 | 35·0 | 27·0 |
| 1890 | 28,579 | 29·9 | 19·1 |
| 1900 | 37,029 | 29·6 | 17·3 |
These figures indicate that the death-rate of each race decreased during a half century, but that the decrease among negroes was much less rapid than among whites. The negro death-rate at the earliest period exceeded that of the whites by 8·0 per thousand, or three-tenths of the smaller rate. At the latest period the difference was 12·3 per thousand, or seven-tenths of the smaller rate. But these figures speak for negroes living mainly in cities where the proportion of children and elderly persons is small and that of negroes at the healthy ages is large. After making a proper allowance for these differences in sex and age composition, it is found that the true death-rate of negroes in the registration area is about twice as high as that of a white population of like sex and age structure. Whether the difference between negro and white residents of the country districts in the south is equally great, we have no means for judging.
The leading causes of death among negroes in the registration area arranged in the order of importance are stated below. The ratio to the corresponding death-rate among whites is added, but the differences are affected partly by the greater proportion of negroes in the southern cities and the different incidence of diseases in the two regions, and partly by probable differences in the accuracy of diagnosis of disease in the two sections and by physicians attending the two races.
| Causes of Death | Negro Death-rate per 1000. |
Ratio to White Death-rate = 100. |
| 4·85 | 280 | |
| 3·55 | 192 | |
| 3·08 | 144 | |
| 2·21 | 161 | |
| 2·14 | 165 | |
| 1·57 | 157 | |
| ·68 | 204 | |
| ·67 | 125 | |
| ·63 | 969 | |
| ·48 | 72 | |
| ·32 | 69 | |
| ·32 | 136 | |
| ·29 | 239 | |
| ·21 | 92 | |
| ·15 | 115 | |
| ·03 | 25 |
These figures bring out in a striking way the very high mortality, absolute and relative, of the American negro from consumption. When one considers both the great number of deaths caused by consumption and pneumonia, 28·4% of the deaths from all causes in 1900 and the very high death-rate of negroes from these diseases, it is no exaggeration to say that the main cause that the death-rate of that race is double that of the white race lies in the ravages of these two scourges of mankind. The difference between the two races in this respect has apparently increased since 1890, for at that date the death-rate of negroes in the registration area from consumption was only 2·37 times that of the whites, and its death-rate from pneumonia only 1·53 times that of the whites. Here as elsewhere there has been an improvement as measured by an absolute standard, and at the same time an increased divergence from the conditions prevailing among the more numerous race.
Wealth.—An estimate of the property now held by American negroes made in 1904 by a committee of the American Economic Association indicated about $300,000,000, with a probable error of perhaps $50,000,000. This figure indicates a per capita wealth of about $34. We have no means for judging what the possessions of the race were at the time of its emancipation, but in 1860 there were nearly half a million free negroes in the country, many of them holding property and some of them wealthy. The per capita wealth of the white population of the United States in 1900 was about $1320 and that of southern whites about $885, indicating that the property of the average negro person or family was about one twenty-fifth that of the average southern white person or family.
Education.—It is often supposed that the American negroes in 1865 were without any accumulated property and without any start in education. Neither assumption is warranted. On the contrary, about two-fifths of the adult free negroes in the country were reported in 1850 and 1860 as able to read and write, and there is some reason to believe that not far from one-twelfth of the adult slaves also had learned to write. In 1900 more than half of the negroes at least ten years of age could write, and the proportion was rising at a rate which, if continued, would almost eliminate illiteracy by the middle of the present century.
The problem of providing adequate educational facilities for negro children is made more difficult by the maintenance in all the former slave states of two sets of schools, one for each race. At the present time those states with one-third of their population negro assign about one-fifth of their public school funds to the support of negro schools. About $155,000,000 or one-sixth of the entire amount spent by southern communities for public schools between 1870 and 1906, has gone to support schools for the negroes. The same cause has been aided by many private gifts from individuals and organizations interested in negro education, among which the Peabody Education Fund of about $2,000,000, now in course of dissolution, and the John F. Slater Fund, now of about $1,500,000, may be mentioned. Wide differences of opinion exist regarding the character of education needed for the race, and the present trend is towards a greater emphasis upon manual and industrial training as of prime importance for the great majority.
Occupations.—The slavery system furnished industrial training to many slaves who seemed likely to turn it to their master’s advantage. When this system was abolished the opportunities for such training open to the race were decreased, and it is doubtful whether even yet as large a proportion of skilled negro artizans are being trained in the south as were produced there before the Civil War. The demand for skilled labour in the south is being met more and more by white labour. This derives an advantage from a prejudice in its favour on the part of white employers even when other things are equal, from its greater skill and efficiency in most cases, its better opportunity to accumulate or to borrow the requisite capital, its superior industry, persistence and thrift. In consequence negroes are being more and more excluded from the field of skilled labour in the south.
Morals.—As the death-rate is believed to vary inversely as health and longevity and thus to afford a measure of those characteristics, so the crime-rate is often thought to vary inversely as morality, and thus to measure the self-control, good order and moral health of the community. But the analogy cannot be pushed. The crime-rate is everywhere far more difficult, and in the United States impossible to ascertain. And even if known the connexion between the infrequency of crime or of specific sorts of crime and the prevalence of good order, obedience to law and morality is far more indirect and subject to far more qualifications than the connexion between the death-rate and health. Still the data regarding crime with all their defects are the best available index of moral progress or retrogression. It must be remembered that the comparative infrequency of crime among slaves, even if it existed, is no proof of the absence of criminal tendencies and actions. Offences on the part of slaves, or at least minor offences which are always far more numerous than serious offences, were dealt with in most cases privately and without invoking the machinery of the law. An apparent increase of crime since emancipation might be due merely to the becoming patent of what was before latent. The only statistical measure of crime now possible in the United States is the number of prisoners in confinement at a given date, and these figures are an inadequate and misleading substitute for true judicial statistics. The evidence they afford, however, is far better than any other in existence and