evidence, certainly none brought forward by the author, to show that the death rate of the Negro in the country at large is much in excess of that of the whites. “In the rural districts the mortality of the Negro is not excessive; it is in the cities and towns where he is brought into close contact with the evils and vices of civilization that he dies so rapidly.”[24]

3. Is the death rate, even in the cities, so great as to foreshadow extinction? Nothing is great or small except by comparison. The death rate among the Negroes in the large cities at present is not as great as it was among the whites forty years ago; that is, if we may rely upon the statistics which Mr. Hoffman himself has presented.

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[Pg 13]

 Mortality among Whites in Southern Cities.[25]

Under improved sanitary regulations these rates have been lowered until at present they are not at all alarming. May not the same improvement in his environment effect similar changes in the death rate of the Negro?

Let us compare the death rate of the Negro race with that of the Germans as presented in the census of 1880.

This high death rate of the American Negro does not exceed that of the white race in other parts of the civilized globe. If race traits are playing such havoc with the Negroes in America, what direful agent of death, may we ask the author, is at work in the cities of his own fatherland?

4. Does the death rate among Negroes show a tendency to increase? In the District of Columbia there has been a gradual decline in the death rate of the Negro population from 40.78 in 1876 to 29.54 in 1896.[26]

Again, Mr. Hoffman’s statistics will show a steady improvement in Southern cities for the last twenty years.

 Death rate among Negroes in Southern Cities.[27]

[Pg 14]A recent report of the Labor Bureau throws much light on the subject.

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