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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