CENSUS STATISTICS OF THE NEGRO.

A PAPER BY
WALTER F. WILLCOX.

[From the Yale Review, November, 1904.]

THERE is no leading country in which the relations of widely different races are so important as in the United States. As a natural result of this, there is no country in which statistical investigation of race questions is so highly developed, or in which the records cover so long a time. In Europe it is not customary to recognize or emphasize the race classification of the population in statistical returns. In India the race classification while recognized is subsidiary to that of religion and of language. In American countries to the south of the United States where race relations are as complex and as diverse as they are with us, the statistical method is imperfectly developed or of recent introduction. The main sources of statistical information, therefore, regarding race relations are the figures for the United States and those for several of the West Indian Islands.

Since the Civil War the statistical study of certain aspects of race questions in the United States has been entered upon by different governmental agencies. The Department of Agriculture has made investigations of the diet and food supply of negroes and of whites with especial reference to the bodily heat and the energy it can produce. The Department of Labor has made a number of suggestive reports upon the condition of negro communities in certain typical localities. Various municipal health reports throw light upon the vital statistics of the two races. The Bureau of Education has gathered much information regarding the educational development of negroes and whites. But no one of these and perhaps not all of them combined have furnished or are furnishing at the present time as much information regarding the statistics of race in the United States as the Census Bureau.[1] It is of the highest importance that the information thus gathered should be carefully and intelligently interpreted and its lessons correctly read. The object of this paper is to state certain conclusions to which I have been brought by my statistical studies of the subject and especially of the recent census figures.