Once more, consider this table of the percentages in families of one, two to six, seven to ten, eleven and more in the United States in general, and in the Negro population of a number of cities, as Atlanta, Nashville, Cambridge:
| 1 | 2 to 6 | 7 to 10 | 11 and more | |
| U.S. | 3.63 | 73.33 | 20.97 | 2.07 |
| N. | 4.75 | 79.85 | 15.22 | .18 |
It is seen that the small families (Negro) greatly preponderate. Of the 79.85 per cent., nearly one-fourth (19.17 per cent.) were families of only two (op. cit., p. 167).
"For several decades to come, the average size of the Negro family will decrease until economic well-being can keep pace with the demands of a rising standard of living" (op. cit., p. 166). We have italicized this sentence, for it pronounces the doom of the Negro.
As the standard of living rises, as competition sharpens, his economic "well-being" will find it harder and harder to "keep pace," his family will shrink more and more, his race will dwindle faster and faster into insignificance.
A striking corroboration of our results surprises the reader of Professor C. H. Crogman's work, "The Remarkable Advancement of the Afro-American," at Chapter XIII, on "Mortality." Therein Professor Harris, of Fisk University, reports an intensive study of the Nashville Negro, whose circumstances are at least comparatively favourable. In 145 families he found 649 persons, an average of not quite 4½; hence, he yields the contention that the Negro is "prolific." "The excessive mortality" he found "due largely and perhaps altogether, to constitutional diseases." "Pulmonary consumption is the 'destroying angel.'" "Thirteen suffer from scrofula." "More white people die from contagious diseases and local diseases than colored; while more colored people die from constitutional diseases than white." The "crimes of mothers," he found "also a fruitful reason of the slow rate of increase in the colored population. This state of affairs is not confined to Nashville. It is true of nearly all our large Southern cities; and whether we like it or not, the hard fact remains that the enormous death rate among us, together with our small birth rate, is one of the signs of the times that, unless our home life be radically changed, the Negro problem in America may be ultimately solved by the extinction of the Negro." And more to the same effect.
Such is the state of case, as attested by a professor in the best-known coloured university, among a populace that have dwelt for a whole generation in the shadow of this noted seminary. House-to-house investigation tells everywhere the same story. Thus, in 1901, as appears from the "concrete study" embodied in the Master's Dissertation of William Wilson Elwang, there were 34 births in a Negro population of 1,916 (Columbia, Mo.)—17 per thousand against a death rate of 24 per thousand. The small family average was almost precisely the same as in Nashville. There were only 161 children under 6 years of age, and 60 married couples were childless! The interpretation has already been suggested in the foregoing quotations.
From all of this it is clear, not only that the coloured birth rate is low and is falling, but why it is low, and why it is falling. It is almost impossible that it should long remain so much as thirty-five per thousand per annum, or even thirty-four or thirty-three. It seems certainly descending towards thirty—that is, 300 births per myriad yearly. But the present death rate is 296 per myriad; it fell only three, from 299 to 296, in the decade from 1890 to 1900; it actually rose from 308 to 313 in the cities of the non-registration area. Thus it appears certain that the birth and death rates of the Negro cannot continue very far apart, that they are steadily approaching, and that without some strange reversal of present tendencies, the birth rate must ere long fall below the death rate in all but a very few districts, and at no distant period even in them. In all likelihood these tendencies will be rather strengthened than weakened with advancing years, and there are those now living who will actually see the Afro-American moving rapidly towards extinction. But even at the present rate, he must shrink swiftly in importance; for the census analyst admits that even in the registration area the death rate of the Negro is about ten per thousand greater than that of the foreign White, and about thirteen per thousand greater than that of the native White. Since his birth rate can hardly, in the extremest cases, exceed the native White's, much less the foreigner's, it follows that both must gain and are gaining on him, at least ten per thousand yearly. Regard it, then, as you will, there is no escape from our general conclusion, which faces us from the whole circle of statistical fact.
RECORD OF CRIME
We pass now, formally, to the second grand cause of the Negro's race declension—namely, his vice. The general fact is a matter of the most common observation, but it is also witnessed unimpeachably by the records of the courts. Here is how the case stands in the census of 1890. The White population was then almost exactly seven and one-half times the Black. The prisoners in the United States, June 1, 1890 were: Whites 57,310, Blacks 24,277. In proportion to numbers, the Black prisoners should have been 7,642, but they were more than thrice as many; the Black appears more than thrice as criminal as the White. This, however, is not nearly the whole truth. The list of Caucasian crimes swells chiefly in the Northeast, where foreigners most and Negroes least abound. In the various grand divisions of the country, the record comes out far more clearly. Thus, in the North Atlantic, there were in prison: Whites 26,182, Blacks 2,037. Out of every myriad of population there were 155 Blacks; out of every myriad of prisoners there were 722 Blacks; his prison rate was nearly five times as high as the Caucasian—this, too, in a region of urban population, largely immigrant. In the North Central there were 2,738 Black prisoners and 17,027 White; the Negro furnished not 2 per cent. of the population, but nearly 14 per cent. of the crime; he was more than seven times as criminal as the White.