During the years of his enslavement, his mortality, in proportion to his numbers and his environments, was no less than it has been since he became a free man—and the bald statement that his death-rate during the past thirty-eight years has greatly increased, may not be founded on facts. Fair play in discussing this phase of the subject demands careful and patient inquiry into the past history of a people concerning whom little or no minute data of a national character was kept. However, this question may not properly enter into the subject, the contention being that the mortality among the race is excessive, which, if true, may be accounted for in part in the existence of certain acknowledged conditions.
Wherever the Negro has been cared for either by himself or by others he has enjoyed the same immunity from disease and death that those of other races have. And whenever neglected or abused, whether the failure or fault rests with himself or others, impaired health, decay of mind and body and death have ensued.
Compared with the masses but few Negroes at any time within the history of the life of the race in this country, have been properly guarded against exposure—the few who in ante bellum days were selected as house servants and to fill other kindred places, were measurably protected. And now the same classes and that of the more fortunate or business classes have limited protection from more than ordinary exposure.
The masses have always done the drudgery. And that too without knowledge or reference to health keeping. A common practice of employed Negroes is to go or be sent on short quick errands, leaving warm and, in this respect, comfortable places of employment without hat or wrap to breast chilling winds or atmospheric conditions many degrees removed from their places of services. In this practice is the exposure from sudden changes of temperature without preparation. The drayman, the cartman, the man in the ditch and others whose employment is in the open air are exposed not alone by the character of the work in which they are engaged but also by reason of the fact that six days of the week, those in which they labor, of necessity, their clothing is poor and shabby and their persons are ill kept. While the seventh day finds them as a rule well clad and well shod. Then their homes—no, their houses, partly because of circumstances beyond their control and partly on account of their improvident natures, are little more than shelters or huts.
These houses are built in what is known or accepted as Negro tenant districts, and those acquainted with the localities need no evidence to convince them that they are not sought as either health or pleasure resorts. They are the city alley ways and the low malarial districts where the noxious gases and foul vapors rise from emptying sewers. More than two hundred years' application has made the Negroes agriculturists; they have been accustomed to labor and to plenty of nature's fresh, invigorating air; they have, because of conditions not proper to treat here, drifted from the farms and fields into the crowded cities, thence into the slums, to be infected with disease.
They have been thrust into prisons where they were provided with the poorest of covering and meanest food for their bodies; where scurvy and other loathsome diseases have made their impress upon them and where incentive to cleanliness is as distant as the North and South poles. Freed from prison life they have gone forth mingling with a class of people infecting them with their scales and spreading disease and death.
Then again the race is without proper places to care for its unfortunate, aged and infirm; without orphanages, reformatories and homes for its friendless. Institutions which are potent factors in the efforts of a people to prevent neglect and cure criminal tendencies.
All of these conditions are breeders of ills and conductors of death which must be and happily are being abated.
The remedy suggested is a knowledge coupled with an appreciation of health. Both to embrace the science of health preserving and of health getting; better homes and better habits, even to being "temperate in all things."
Acquired, accepted and practiced the mortality of the race will be materially lessened.