Similar analysis yields the following average annual excess of births for native Whites, foreign Whites, and the Coloured (i.e. practically Negroes) in the United States, and in the four grand divisions: Northeastern, Central and Northern, Southern, and Western.

N.W. F W. C.
United States 195 365 178
Northeastern 38 396 101
Central and Northern 200 360 102
Southern 241 274 191
Western 259 403 2

Here the more rapid multiplication of the Caucasian is indicated under all conditions, with the single startling exception of New England. In the West, the Coloured are mostly Indians.

Not less impressive are these same excesses arranged by States:

Ala.Ark.Del.D.C.Fla.Ga.Ky.La.Md.Miss.N.C.S.C.
N.W.276297103132288234209358168258193178
F.W.306317310194497240152112175225104110
C.249233731072452258321592264138167
Tenn.Tex.Va.W.Va.Ill.Ind.Ia.Kan.Mich.Minn.Mo.Neb.
N.W.17338775339228163298216193400263222
F.W.230532106252439194310300401534171437
C.13631074196168142622021502690-43
N.J.N.D.O.Pa.S.D.Wis.Conn.Me.Mass.N.H.N.Y.R.I.Vt.
N.W.139353129140299412-18-4238-10489...-88
F.W.398921219368528345425474456585366462232
C.136-230120138-241-14689125174-1508860184

To be sure, these results are greatly complicated and deeply obscured by immigration and emigration. None of them state the case correctly; but they can not all err the same way, and collectively they exhibit clearly that the Negro is losing ground everywhere in the race for numbers. But these rates furnish us no independent evidence concerning the birth rate. Such, however, we find in the number of births in the census years 1890 and 1900. The returns are certainly incorrect, certainly incomplete; they yield a mean birth rate of only 272—surely too small, leaving a deficiency of 79 or of 28½ per cent. That the enumeration of births should be defective is not at all surprising; but there is no reason to suppose the returns for 1890 less imperfect, and a comparison of the two cannot fail to be instructive:

U.S.N.E.C.& N.S.W.Conn.Me.Mass.N.H.N.Y.R.I.
1900272238259315240211240213242243
1890269221268301213176215180233223
Vt.Ind.Ill.Ia.Kan.Mich.Minn.Mo.Neb.N.J.
1900213249255258258243287260272258
1890183254278263285249302290299253
N.D.O.Pa.S.D.Wis.Al.Ark.Del.D.C.Fla.
1900336231269308274321324247203309
1890365242258318271306343250233287
Ga.Ky.La.Md.Miss.N.C.Okl.S.C.Tenn.Tex.
1900321306305263312337337343307329
1890306296298260303301221313308316
Va.W.Va.Ariz.Cal.Col.Ida.Mt.Nev.N.M.Or.
1900303332269183239304244189336204
1890272307172196256266218155330226
Ut.Wash.Wy.
1900352220242
1890312238217

These data are inexact; they are bound up with the errors of enumeration, particularly in 1890, but they confirm in general the high fecundity of the American Caucasian everywhere, save in the Northeast. The high rate indicated in the South cannot be due to the Negro. In West Virginia the coloured element is insignificant, yet the return is very large—332; in Kentucky the Negro hardly holds his own in numbers, yet the whole birth rate is 306. In the Carolinas the native Whites have far outrun the Blacks in increase, and the birth numbers are 337,343; whence it seems clear that nothing points to a Negro rate higher than 351—higher than the general average for the Union. But is the Black rate really so high? Despite the prevailing crude opinion, we feel sure that it is sensibly lower and is steadily falling. There is nothing in the history of the Negro to suggest great fecundity. He has never populated his fatherland densely and poured over into the territory of his neighbours. In the West Indies, where birth tables have been kept with some care, there is no token of great fertility. In Alabama, the records since 1888 point to a birth rate among Whites thrice as high, among Blacks only twice as high, as the death rate. In 1890 the births recorded were: Whites 13,631; Blacks 9,955—the highest in six years but one (9,961 in 1893). In this year the populations were as 100 to 83, but the births as 100 to 73. You say that the Black births were not all recorded. Very true, but neither were the White. The excess of deficiency in the Blacks must have been 14 per cent. of the whole, in order to make their rate equal to the Whites'. Maybe these records are not worth the paper they were written on; but can the same be said of the New England records? In Rhode Island, from 1861 to 1893, the excess of deaths over births, among the Negroes, was 18; in Connecticut from 1881 to 1893 the same excess was 272; in Massachusetts in 1888 it was 68. "... we must conclude, however reluctantly (sic!), that the race is not self-sustaining in this latitude" (Dr. Fisher, Registrar of Vital Statistics, Rhode Island, quoted by Hoffman). Similarly Dr. Snow, Registrar of Providence; similarly Appolino, Registrar of Boston (both quoted by Hoffman). We could go on massing such evidence, but it may all be scouted as irrelevant, since the question is not about the Negro in the North, but in the South. However, it is precisely in the North, especially the Northeast, that his numbers are increasing, of course by immigration, faster and faster; if, then, he "is doomed to extinction" there, his numbers elsewhere must suffer corresponding depletion.

There is yet another and more satisfactory way of attacking this problem of the birth rate—not a direct, but an indirect one. Says the great statistician, Marcus Rubin, in his paper on "Population and Birth Rate," read before the British Association at Bradford, September, 1900: "Quite generally it may be remarked that a large birth rate will crowd the age-groups corresponding to childhood comparatively to what would result from a small birth rate. It is also clear that, when the adults produce a numerous offspring, the latter will, other things being equal, constitute a larger proportion of the whole population than if it were less numerous."

Rubin has Denmark in mind, and western Europe;—he is not dreaming of the Gulf States. Let us apply this common-sense principle to the case in hand. Here is a table of the per thousands of the population at various ages, native White and Black. We take the native White, since immigrants are generally of full age, and we are now concerned with the general fertility of Caucasian natives and not of foreigners; of the latter, it is confessedly very high.