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On the other hand, the areas in which the negroes have increased more rapidly than in the country at large are found mainly in the southern parts of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and eastern Texas, with nearly all of Arkansas and Florida. In other words, the most rapid increase of the race has been in the southern and western parts of the region under consideration. There does not appear to be any decided movement into the "Black Belt," which traverses the central part of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. Indeed, the heaviest increase is south of this region.

CONJUGAL CONDITION.

The conjugal condition of the negroes is set forth for the first time in the reports of the Eleventh Census. With the exception of the matter of divorce, it is summarized in the following diagram (Pl. VII). This shows the proportion of males and females at various ages who were single, married, or widowed. It shows that under the age of 15 there are practically no marriages among the race. Between 15 and 20 a small proportion, perhaps about 1 per cent, of males were married and 14 per cent of the females. At ages between 20 and 25 a third of the males and nearly threefifths of the females were married, and with advancing age a constantly increasing proportion of both sexes is either married or widowed. It is evident, however, that the women marry much younger than men. The proportion of widowed first becomes appreciable between the ages of 20 and 25 years. It increases much more rapidly among females than among males, and altogether the proportion of widows is many times greater than that of widowers, showing that many more widowers remarry than widows, and that they marry largely unmarried women.

Comparison of conjugal statistics of the negroes with those of the whites develops two points of difference: First, that the negroes marry younger than the whites; second, that the proportion of widows at most ages is greater than among whites. The first of these facts is in accord with the shorter life period of the race; the second is a result of the greater death rate of the race.

Statistics of divorce show more frequent severance of conjugal relations among the negroes than among the whites. The proportion of divorced persons to married persons in the United States at large among the native whites was 0.59 of while among the negroes it was 0.67 of 1 per cent.

MORTALITY.

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There is no question but that the rate of mortality among the negro population is considerably greater than among the whites. It is not easy, however, to obtain an accurate measure of the relative death rates of the two races. The census statistics upon this subject are unreliable, since the returns from which they are derived are by no means complete. Were the omissions uniformly distributed between the two races we might still derive a comparison from them regarding the death rates of the two races, but unfortunately there is every probability that the omissions are much greater proportionally among the negroes than among the whites. It is only in a few large Southern cities which maintain a registration of deaths that reliable figures are to be had. In these cities the relative death rates during the census year (1890) are shown in the following table:

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From these figures it appears that in the large cities the annual death rate of the negroes is very nearly if not quite double that of the native whites. It is probable that in the rural districts the disproportion among the death rates is not as great, since it is probable that a rural environment is better suited to the negroes than the environment of a large city. However this may be, there is no reasonable question, as stated above, that the death rate of the negroes is much larger than that of the whites.

CRIMINALITY.

The proportion of criminals among the negroes is much greater than among the whites. The statistics of the last census show that the white prisoners of native extraction confined in jails at the time the census was taken were in the proportion of 9 to each 10,000 of all whites of native extraction, while the negro prisoners were

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