Annual Death Rate of the Colored Race for three quinquennial periods.[28]

This table shows an unmistakable decrease in the death rate for the successive quinquennial periods.

All of which tends to prove that this high death rate is due to condition and is subject to sanitary check and control.

In further confirmation of the fact that the death rate among Negroes is on the decline, the Army records will afford valuable testimony.

 Death rate of Colored Soldiers in the U. S. Army.[29]

In 1895 it is lower than that of the white soldiers. The same general law of a gradually decreasing death rate is here revealed.

If the death rate of the Negro population in cities is not higher than that of corresponding classes of whites; if the records of the census for the country at large do not show it to be in excess of other classes; if the highest rates are not above those of the whites a half century ago, nor higher than those of other civilized communities of the Caucasian race at the present time; and if this rate is constantly decreasing under more favorable sanitary appliances—it is hard to justify the author’s position as to the low vital powers of the race, or to reach the conclusion that extinction will be its ultimate fate.

 The Northern Negroes.

The Northern Negroes.

In further proof of the low vitality of the Negro race the author shows at great length that the race cannot thrive in the North. For [Pg 15]every Northern community for which statistics are available it appears that the death rate is in excess of the birth rate. It does not seem to have occurred to the author that economic and social environment may lead to this deplorable result. Dr. Walker, in a publication which has already been referred to, states: “The industrial raison d’etre of the Negro is here (in the South) found at its maximum. In the Northern states this raison d’etre wholly disappears. There is nothing, aside from a few kinds of personal service, which the Negro can do which the white man cannot do as well or perhaps better.”[30]

[Pg 15]

In the North the Negro race lives in industrial and social captivity; not being in sufficient numbers to form an independent constituency, they whine and pine over certain abstract principles of equality and brotherhood, but which, alas, fade 

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