Of the diseases which are excessively prevalent among colored people the most portant, and the one which should be the occasion of the greatest alarm, is conuption. We have seen already that consumption and pneumonia are among the ses of excessive mortality of the colored people, the excess per cent of Charleston, emphis, and Richmond being 130.4.

The table following shows the rate per 10,000 of deaths from consumption in all cities investigated:

It is to be seen that in all of the cities the death rate for consumption is high nong the colored people, the lowest rate being 34.74 per 10,000, in Richmond, and e highest 72.20, in Charleston. The greatest disparity between the white and the lored death rate for this cause is also in Charleston, where the excess per cent of e colored is as high as 239.5. The important fact must not be lost sight of that e death rate from this cause has constantly decreased in all the cities except arleston, and in Charleston the death rate for the period 1890-1891 is lower than r the period 1881-1884. There is reason, however, for great concern and anxiety as the excessive prevalence of this disease among the colored people. Unless checked id reduced to a normal state, it may in the course of years be a deciding factor in e ultimate fate of the race. The prevalence of tubercular and scrofulous diseasesnsumption, scrofula, syphilis, and leprosy-has caused the weaker races of the rth to succumb before the rising tide of the Christian civilization. The Carib of e West Indies, the noble red man of these shores, the natives of the Sandwich lands, and the aborigines of Australia and New Zealand have all disappeared or en greatly reduced in numbers as the result of the ravages, of these diseases. It ould be an object of first importance, then, to get control of these diseases before ey reach the point where control is impossible.

It will be of interest to know somewhat in detail the physical condition of the pulation in Atlanta for the fourteen years from 1882 to 1895, and the tables which llow set forth quite fully this fact.

It is seen that the death rate of the colored population, though greatly in excess that of the white, has constantly decreased, the average death rate per 1,000 for first period being 37.96, for the second 33.41, and for the third 32.76. Relatively, compared with the whites, the death rate of the colored shows much improveme Though the percentage of excess of colored for the third period is greater than that for the second, the percentage for both of these periods shows a marked decreas from that of the first period.

The following tables show for three periods, 1882 to 1885, 1886 to 1890, and 11 t 1895, the average annual death rate per 10,000, Atlanta, Ga., by specified causes:

CONSUMPTION AND PNEUMONΝΙΑ.

1882-1885 1886-1890 1891-1895

1886-1890 1891-1895

1882-1885

1886-1890

1891-1895

TYPHOID, SCARLET, AND MALARIAL FEVERS, AND DIPHTHERIA.

It is observed that in all these groups of causes the colored death rate h creased from period to period, except for consumption and pneumonia, where death rate for the period 1891-1895 is greater than for the period 1886-1890, the slightly less than for the period 1882-1885.

The statistics presented in the various tables which this paper contains, re candidly and dispassionately, show results favorable to the physical improve of the colored race. If the mortality rate had remained stationary for a period fifteen years, it would have been a lasting evidence of the physical strength & endurance of the race. But we have shown that the rate has decreased in period, and that, too, as is well known, in the face of hard, exacting, and op sive social and economic conditions. When all of the facts in the colored mas are taken into consideration, the wonder is, not that the death rate is as bizba is, but that it is not even higher. The history of weak and inferior races shows t they begin to decrease in number after one generation's contact with Anglo-Sa civilization. The native population of the Sandwich Islands a hundred years population to be 35,000. We do not witness this decay and decrease in numbers was estimated to be 100,000. The latest census taken on the islands shows the nat

the colored race anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.

In studying any phase of negro life in the United States, the fact must be l

nstantly in view that the negro has been subjected to degrading and blasting very for more than two centuries. While slavery did its victims a great wrong depriving them of the fruits of their toil, it did them a greater wrong in denying em opportunities for moral and mental improvement. Those who sit in judgme t on the negro and study his frailties and shortcomings must not forget these evious conditions.

To recapitulate, it has been shown

First. That the colored death rate exceeds the white, the excess averaging for five ies, during a period of fifteen years, 73.8 per cent.

Second. That the death rate of the colored population in five cities is lower for the riod 1890-1895 than for the period 1881-1885.

Third. That the principal causes of the excessive mortality among the colored ople of five cities are pulmonary diseases and infant mortality.

Fourth. That the least disparity between the white and colored death rates is for ose diseases due to un wholesome sanitary conditions- typhoid, malarial and scarfevers, diphtheria, and diarrhea.

This last fact, that the excessive death rate of the colored people does not arise om diseases due to environment, is of vast importance. If poor houses, unhealthy calities, bad sewerage, and defective plumbing were responsible for their high eath rate, there would be no hope of reducing the death rate until either the coled people became wealthy, or philanthropic persons erected sanitary houses, or unicipalities made appropriations to remove these conditions. But since the cessive death rate is not due to these causes, there is reason for the belief that it ay be reduced without regard to the present economic conditions of the colored eople.

THE PHYSICAL CONDITION OF THE RACE.

If the colored people in our larger towns are bent upon living near the enter of the city, they can not rent or buy property, except in the less desirable or bandoned parts. But it is not necessity, it is only convenience that leads them to ve over stables, in dark, damp cellars, and on back alleys in the midst of stench nd putrefaction. They can, if they would, go to the suburbs, where they can get etter accommodations for less money. I have been in families in Nashville ranging com seven to ten living on a back alley with a rivulet of filth running before the oor of the one room in which they bathed and ate and slept and died. Two miles arther out all of these families might have secured for the same money shanties of wo and three rooms, with purer air and water, and had a garden spot besides. Among he colored people convenience to the heart of the city often overrides considerations f health, and that the white people offer them hotbeds of disease for homes is no xcuse for their taking them. It is better to live in the suburbs than to die in the ity. The negro is induced, but not forced, to accept the bad accommodations of own-town life. Apart from this apparent exception in the matter of rented houses, o race discrimination affects in the least the negro's physical condition; and it is or this very reason that I am hopeful of a change for the better in the vital statistics of our people. If the large death rate, the small birth rate, the susceptibility to usease, and the low vitality of the race were due to causes outside of our control, I ould see nothing before us but the "blackness of darkness forever;" but because he colored people themselves are responsible for this sad state of affairs, it is to be xpected that time and education will correct it.

The conclusions which I shall draw in this paper are based largely upon my study if the problem in Nashville.

In the first place, then, the excess of colored deaths over white is due almost ntirely to constitutional diseases and infant mortality. According to health statisics, the constitutional diseases which are mainly responsible for our large death ate are pulmonary consumption, scrofula, and syphilis, all of which are alike in eing tuberculous. A large number of the colored convicts in our State prison at Nashville are consumptives or syphilitics. Out of 92 deaths in a certain territory in Nashville, 19 deaths, or over 20 per cent, were due to consumption. The other 73 leaths were due to thirty-five different causes. In the recent Atlanta investigaion, according to the mortality report of Cambridge, Mass., consumption was the ause of 15 per cent of the deaths.

Deaths from consumption in Nashville for the period 1893-1895.

Alarming as are the facts set forth in the preceding table, they are not the ri truth. They would be occasion for serious concern if the races were numerica equal, but when we remember that the colored people of Nashville are only t fifths as numerons as the whites, it is all the more startling. For the year 1895, 82 white deaths from consumption occurred in the city of Nashville, there ought have been only 49 colored, whereas there really were 218, or nearly four and one-b times as many as there ought to have been. It is an occasion of serious alarm wi 37 per cent of the whole people are responsible for 72 per cent of the deaths in consumption.

Deaths among colored people from pulmonary diseases seem to be on the increas throughout the South. During the period 1882-1885, the excess of colored desis from consumption for the city of Memphis was 90.80 per cent. For the period 151895, the excess had arisen to over 137 per cent. For the period of 1886-1890), tir: excess of colored deaths from consumption and pneumonia for the city of Athe was 139 per cent. For the period 1891-1895, it had arisen to nearly 166 per cert From these facts it would appear that pulmonary consumption is the "destroying angel" among us, and yet I am told that before the war this dread disease was TItually unknown among the slaves. Fortunately, Charleston, S. C., kept even befor the war the mortality statistics of the colored people, and, consequently, we are able to ascertain with some accuracy how their death rate from consumption bei the war compares with their death rate afterwards. What are the facts in the ca From 1822 to 1848 the colored death rate from consumption was a trifle less the the white. Since 1865 it has been considerably greater, and is still increasing According to F. L. Hoffman, the white mortality from that cause has decreased st the war 134 per 100,000. The colored mortality has increased over 234 per 1000 The question arises, How do we account for this change? Is it because the nez is inherently more susceptible to pulmonary diseases, or is it because of his changed environment-his different social conditions? If his tendency to consumption is d to his inherent susceptibility, what was it that held it in check until after the war! It seems that this fact alone is sufficient to fix the responsibility upon the conditions which have arisen since emancipation. Mr. F. L. Hoffman claims that the negres lungs weigh 4 ounces less than a white man's, and that though his normal ches measure is greater, his lung capacity is less; and that here we have a cause for th negro's tendency to consumption which no environment, however favorable, ca affect. Even if this be a fact, it is hard to see how it began to operate as a canti of consumption only since the war.

Let us turn for the present to another cause of the excessive mortality amongs namely, the increased prevalence of scrofula and venereal diseases. For the pers 1882-1885 the colored death rate in Memphis from scrofula and syphilis was 25. cent in excess of that among the whites, but from 1891 down to the present time the excess has been 298 per cent. For the period 1893-1895 there were in the city Nashville 8 white deaths from scrofula and syphilis and 35 colored. In proportion the population, there ought to have been only 5. Of course allowance must be m for the fact that, on account of the scandal and disgrace, white physicians are rela tant to report white deaths from these causes, whereas such motives rarely, if eve influence them in reporting colored deaths.

According to the May bulletin of the Department of Labor, ont of 1,090 colori people canvassed this year in the city of Nashville, 18 were suffering from scrofu and syphilis. One whose attention has not been called to the matter has no cones tion of the prevalence of these diseases among the negroes of Nashville. I a looked for it in both races as I have walked the streets of my city, and to come acr the loathsome disease in the colored passers-by is not an uncommon occurrence. state of affairs can be accounted for when I tell you that there is probably no cir this country where prostitution among colored people is more rampant and bra and where abandoned colored women are more numerous or more shameful traffic.

public in the In the families canvassed by me this year, among 50 sufferers from rheumatism. were so badly crippled as to be bedridden invalids. When we consider the fact th some forms of rheumatism are syphilitic in their origin, and that in these same fa lies there were 18 suffering from scrofula and syphilis, it would appear that venere poisoning was responsible for a considerable share of the rheumatism.

There is one obstacle to the race's reproducing itself that has some connection venereal diseases, and hence I speak of it now. I refer to the enormous amo stillbirths and infant mortality prevalent everywhere among colored people. the period of 1893-1895, the still and the premature births in the city of Nash were 272 for the white and 385 for the colored; or, in proportion to the populate two and one-third times as many as there ought to have been. This relative sta of affairs obtains in Memphis and Atlanta, and in all the large cities of the Soc

1See Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro, by F. L. Hoffman.-ED.

From the health reports of all our large Southern cities we learn that a considerable mount of our infant mortality is due to inanition, infantile debility, and infantile narasmus. Now, what is the case in regard to these diseases? The fact is that they are not diseases at all, but merely the names of symptoms due to enfeebled constitusions and congenital diseases, inherited from parents suffering from the effects of sexual immorality and debauchery. Translated into common speech, they are nothng more than infant starvation, infant weakness, and infant wasting away, the cause of which is that the infants' parents before them have not given them a fighting chance for life. According to Hoffman, over 50 per cent of the negro children born in Richmond, Va., die before they are 1 year old.

The number of still and premature births among us is a matter of great alarm, not only because it seriously interferes with the numerical increase of the race, but because it involves the fecundity, the health, and even the moral character of large numbers of our women. The support of the family often falls very heavily upon our poor washerwomen; and since they find it hard to get the husks to feed and the rags to clothe their already large number of little folks, living in one room like stock, rather than to add to their burden they resort to crime. An official on the Nashville board of health, who is also proprietor of a drug store, tells me that he is astonished at the number of colored women who apply at his store for drugs with a criminal purpose in view.

The sixteen Atlanta groups in the recent investigation showed that the female heads of families are considerably in excess of the male, and out of 324 families 31 were wholly supported by the mother, and 205 were supported by the mother altogether or in part. In such social conditions as these, where the burden of bread winning is borne largely, and often altogether, by the mother of the household, it is not surprising that poor laboring women, who are ignorant of its ruinous effects upon both health and character, should resort to prenatal infanticide.

The average family for the eighteen cities covered by our recent investigation numbers only 4.1, which means that in these eighteen cities the race is doing barely more than reproducing itself. The large colored families of a few decades ago are becoming more and more scarce. I know a grandmother who was the proud mother of over a dozen children; the daughter could boast of nine; and not one of several granddaughters, though married for a number of years, is the mother of more than one child. This family is but an illustration of many others just like it. Such facts go to show that the negro is no longer the "prolific animal" that he once was termed. The race, like the women of whom Paul once wrote to Timothy, must be "saved through childbearing."

I take it that the excess of infant mortality from cholera infantum and convulsions means nothing more than that the negro mothers do not know so well how to feed and care for their offspring. They need instruction in infant dietetics and baby culture.

I have now covered the ground to which our excessive death rate is mainly due, namely, pulmonary diseases, especially consumption and pneumonia, scrofula, venereal diseases, and infant mortality. If we eliminate these diseases, our excessive death rate will be a thing of the past.

Let us now inquire, What is there in the negro's social condition that is responsible for the prevalence of these diseases, and the consequent mortality? In the first place, then, be it known by all men that we to-day in this conference assembled aro not the enemies of our people because we tell them the truth. We shall know the truth, and the truth shall make us free, not only from the bondage of sin, but from vicious social conditions and consequent physical death. Sanitary regulations and the social reconstruction of Israel formed a large part of Moses' religious duty, and why may it not of ours?

While I do not depreciate sanitary regulations and a knowledge of hygienic laws, I am convinced that the sine qua non of a change for the better in the negro's physical condition is a higher social morality. I do not believe that his poverty or his relation to the white people presents any real impediment to his health and physical development. Without going into the reasons for it, it is well known that the poor laboring classes often enjoy better health, are freer from disease, have larger families, and live longer lives thau the rich.

I am convinced that for the causes of the black man's low vitality, his susceptibility to disease, and his enormous death rate we must look to those social conditions which ho creates for himself. What are they? I have already referred to the social causes of our excessive infant mortality, namely, the frequency with which the partial or the entire maintenance of the household devolves upon the mother; and especially the impaired chance for life which a debauched and immoral parentage bequeaths to childhood. The infants in their graves will rise up in judgment against this evil and adulterous generation and condemn it.

The constitutional diseases which are responsible for our unusual mortality are often traceable to enfeebled constitutions broken down by sexual immoralities.