Sociology and Modern Social Problems

by Charles A. Ellwood

Of course vice accompanies crime among the American negroes. The statistics of illegitimacy in Washington cited by Hoffman in his Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro show that in fifteen years in Washington, from 1879 to 1894, the percentage of illegitimate births among the whites was 2.9 per cent, while the percentage among the negroes was 22.5. In other words, from one fifth to one fourth of all the negro births in Washington during that fifteen-year period were illegitimate. Statistics collected in other cities show approximately the same result. Of course statistics of illegitimacy are not exactly the same thing as statistics of vice, but they, at any rate, throw a light upon the moral condition of the negro in this regard, and particularly show the demoralization of his family life.

(3) Negro Pauperism. We have no good statistics on negro pauperism, but such as we have seem to indicate that the state of dependence of the negro is very great. In the city of Washington, where 30 per cent of the population is made up of negroes, 84 per cent of the pauper burials are those of negroes; and in Charleston, where 57 per cent of the population are negroes, 96.7 per cent of the pauper burials are those of negroes. In nearly all communities where organized charities exist the negroes contribute to the dependent population far out of proportion to their numbers. It is safe to say that from 50 to 75 per cent of the total negro population of the United States live in poverty as distinguished from pauperism, that is, live under such conditions that physical and mental efficiency cannot be maintained.

(4) Negro Vital Statistics. The negro death and birth rates are both very high. No definite statistics of negro death and birth rates have been kept except in cities and in a few rural districts. In Alabama in a few registered districts the negro birth rate has been found to be equal to about twice the death rate. On the other hand it is a curious fact that in the North the negro fails to reproduce sufficiently to keep up his numbers, consequently the negro population in Northern states would die out if it were not for immigration. In Massachusetts in 1888, for example, there were 511 negro births and 579 negro deaths. Statistics from other Northern communities tell the same story.

The vital statistics of Southern cities show that the negro death rate is very much higher than the white death rate. In ten Southern cities, for example, Hoffman gives the average death rate for the whites as 20 per thousand for the white population, and for the negroes as 32.6 per thousand of the negro population. These same cities in 1901-1905 showed an annual average death rate for the whites of 17.5 and for the negroes of 28.4. In several cities the negro death rate is nearly twice that of the whites. When these mortality statistics are analyzed, moreover, while they show that negro mortality at all ages is greater than white mortality, it is greatest among negro children under fifteen years of age. This is of course largely because of the ignorant manner in which negroes care for their children, but it also indicates that natural selection is at work among the American negroes rapidly eliminating the biologically unfit.

Conclusions from Negro Vital Statistics. Three important conclusions may be drawn from the negro vital and population statistics which are well worth emphasizing. (1) The negro population is not increasing so fast as the white, owing largely to its high death rate, yet it is increasing, and there is no indication as yet that the negro population will decrease. It is probable, indeed, that at the end of the twentieth century the negro population of the United States will be between twenty and thirty millions. The view of some students of the negro problem that the negro is destined to an early extinction in this country is merely a speculative hypothesis, and as yet is not substantiated by any statistical facts.

(2) While the negro is destined to be with us always, so far as we can see, yet owing to the fact of intermixture of races he will be less and less a pure negro, so that at the end of the twentieth century the negroes in the United States will be much nearer the white type than at the present time.

(3) The high death rate among the negroes indicates that a rapid process of natural selection is going on among them. Now, natural selection means the elimination of the unfit,—the dying out of those who cannot adapt themselves to their environment. This selective process will tend toward the survival of the more fit elements among the negroes, and, therefore, towards bringing the negro up to the standard of the whites. The misery and vice which we see among the present American negroes are simply in a large degree the expression of the working of a process of natural selection among them. It would be preferable, however, if the white race could by education and other means substitute to some degree at least artificial selection for the miseries and brutality of the natural process of eliminating the unfit. This the superior race should do to protect itself as well as to raise the negro.

Industrial Conditions Among the Negroes.—Recently a committee of the American Economic Association estimated that all of the taxable property in the United States owned by negroes amounted to $300,000,000, or about $33.00 per head,—this estimate being based upon the 1900 census returns. Thirty-three dollars per head of the negro population seems of course very small when compared to the $1,000.00 per capita owned by the whites; but we must remember that the negro at his emancipation was in no way equipped to acquire property, and, with the exception of a few freedmen, the negro at the close of the war had no property whatsoever. In a few cases their old masters set up the emancipated negroes with small farms. In 1900 there were 746,715 farms occupied by negroes either as tenants or owners. Twenty-five per cent of these farms were owned by negroes and about ten per cent were owned unencumbered.

There are, of course, two ways of looking at these statistics. They are discouraging if we care to look at them in that way, but on the other hand, if we consider the disadvantageous position in which the negro was placed at the close of the Civil War, the statistics may be taken as showing a marked advance.

It must be said here that, as Booker Washington has urged, the negro problem is largely of an industrial nature. It is the unsatisfactoriness of the negro as a worker, as a producing agent, that gives rise largely to the friction between the two races. The negro has not yet become adapted to a system of free contract and is frequently unreliable as a laborer. This breeds continued antagonism between the races. It is only necessary here to remark that when the negro becomes an efficient producer and a property owner the negro problem will be practically solved.