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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]

A recent report of the Labor Bureau throws much light on the subject.

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.

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 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