43.48 Baltimore   1886   58.65   1887   55.42   1892   49.41 Charleston   1881-1884   72.20   1885-1889   68.08   1890-1894   57.66 Memphis   1882-1885   65.35   1886-1890   50.30   1891-1895   37.78 Richmond   1881-1885   54.93   1886-1890   41.63   1892-1895   34.74

It appears that the total death rate as well as that due to consumption among Negroes reached the maximum about 1880 and has been on the gradual decline ever since.

Consumption is only one of the contributing causes of the total death rate. It has been shown that the death rate from all causes does not necessarily point to the extinction of the race. This being so, there is no need of unnecessary alarm over a single factor; for in sociology, as in mathematics, we cannot escape the fundamental truth that the whole is greater than any of its parts.

 

Vital Capacity and Economic Efficiency.

The author’s proposition as to the low vitality of the Negro and its effect upon his economic efficiency is contrary alike to the traditional and prevalent belief. The whole fabric of slavery rested upon the assumption that the Negro was better able to resist the trying condition of the southern climate than the white laborer. The industrial reconstruction of the South is building upon the same foundation. No one doubts that the Negro is able to resist certain miasmatic and febrific diseases which are so destructive to the white race in the tropical regions of the earth. Science and wise hygienic appliances have improved the condition of the white race in this respect, it is true, but will not the same appliances benefit the Negro in the same degree?

Dr. Daniel H. Williams, surgeon-in-chief of the Freedmen’s Hospital, at Washington, D. C., informs me that during his professional experience he has performed upward of 3000 surgical operations, one-fourth of which at least were upon white patients, and that he has found unmistakable evidence of higher vital power among the colored patients. I am also informed that this is the general opinion of the medical profession.

Although the author treats exhaustively the whole catalogue of diseases and the numerous ills which flesh is heir to, it can be safely claimed that he does not establish his main proposition set forth in the beginning of the chapter, and that at least a Scotch verdict is demanded: “not proven.”

 

 

---

CHAPTER III.

Subject. Anthropometry.

Gist. “In vital capacity, the most important of all physiological characteristics, the tendency of the race has been downward.”[36]

Ample statistics are presented to show that in proportion to structure the Negro is heavier than the white man. This fact, the author tells us, is ordinarily considered favorable to a healthy development and freedom from pulmonary weakness. “The elaborate investigations of the medical department of the New York Mutual Life, in 1874, of the Washington Life, in 1886, the Prudential Insurance Company of America, in 1895, and the New York Mutual Life, in 1895, prove conclusively that low weight in proportion to age and stature is a determining factor in the susceptibility of an individual to consumption.”[37]

In order to explain away this apparent advantage in favor of the Negro, the author has invented a unique physiological principle, viz: “A physiological law may hold good for one race and not for another.”[38] It is noticeable that the author applies this principle only when it suits his convenience but withholds it whenever it runs across his theory.

By a series of measurements based, confessedly, upon insufficient data, it is concluded that the Negro has a smaller lung capacity, smaller chest expansion, and a higher rate of respiration than the white man, and that the Mulatto is inferior to both the parent races in these vital functions. These differences are considered a powerful factor in lung degeneration, and proof positive of physical inferiority. In these respects he tacitly repudiates his erstwhile principle that “a physiological law may hold good for one race and not for another,” and assumes that the two races are subject to like conditions of disease and death.

On the whole it may be said that this is the least interesting chapter in the whole book. The data are so slender and the arguments are so evidently shaped to a theory, that we are neither enlightened by the one nor convinced by the other. But the author’s judgment must be justified. The gloomy warning comes with Catonian regularity at the end of each chapter. Listen to his last words: “A combination of these traits and tendencies must in the end cause the extinction of the race.”[39]

If the Negro is inferior in vital function and power to the Caucasian, he will be a public benefactor who scientifically demonstrates the fact. But the colored race most stubbornly refuses to be argued out of existence on an insufficient induction of data and unwarranted conclusions deduced therefrom.

 

 

---

CHAPTER IV.

Subject. Amalgamation.

Gist. “The crossing of the Negro race with the white has been detrimental to its true progress and has contributed more than anything else to the excessive and increasing rate of mortality from the most fatal disease, as well as to its consequent inferior social efficiency and diminishing power as a force in American national life.”[40]

The importance of this proposition is apparent when we consider that the Negroes in this country are a thoroughly mixed people. The pure African type has been well nigh obliterated. It is pointed out also that the mongrel progeny has been produced by illicit intercourse between the white male and the black female. The moral and conservative qualities of a race reside in its womanhood. The Negro people, then, have missed these transmitted qualities. The author is either ignorant of or ignores the large class of mixed Negroes who are the legitimate