TEE WASTE OF CEILDREN 555 



tains, possess natural advantages, yet cities under similar conditions 

 show most striking contrasts. Still worse, the same city may con- 

 tain the extremes of progress and of neglect. Hence our efforts can 

 not be abated until they have wrested from the destroyer every vestige 

 of his ill-gotten power. It is the province of science and the duty of 

 society to force from nature what she can not rightfully claim, and to 

 leave her the remainder only. Serious changes in our methods and 

 policies may be involved, but these must be molded according to this 

 undying purpose. The miserable conditions still prevailing among 

 the American negroes are evidence of this need. An infant mortality 

 in Charleston where the majority are negroes, of 419 per 1,000, 

 and in other southern cities of more than 300 is little better than 

 barbarism. At first thought the racial factor might be assigned as 

 the cause of this great difference between the vitality of white and 

 colored infants, but this defence of social inaction is unworthy of 

 our race. A closer investigation shows that the death rate in the 

 rural portion of the registration area was 218.9 for colored infants, 

 but that the city rate stood at 387. This difference roughly meas- 

 ures the advantages of a more favorable social environment. Were 

 the care of the children a more capable one and the conditions making 

 for degradation and disordered birth rate ameliorated, this wide dif- 

 ference would not exist, and the rates in the rural districts could be 

 further reduced. Eemembering the former pitiless slaughter of 

 white infants, our hopes for the negro need not be abated. Indeed the 

 colored infant mortality of the rural districts in 1900 was but little 

 above that of white infants for the entire registration area in 1890. 

 What hopes then might not knowledge and prosperity offer! Three 

 eighths of the negro infants of the cities dying annually! To their 

 mothers they are nothing but a curse, a cause of pain and sorrow. A 

 cross-section of a darker age resides in our midst. Yet 150 years ago 

 the children of our ancestors died with an equal facility. 



Climate and certain phases of nature have so far proved impregna- 

 ble to the genius of our race. Their disadvantages may have to be 

 borne for years and centuries, but for acclimated peoples an infant 

 death rate of 307 per 1,000, as was recorded for the Philippines for 

 1903, is only an evidence of an inferior and brutal civilization. To 

 counteract such death rates and provide for a liberal increase of popu- 

 lation a birth rate must be excessive if not inhuman. 



These facts disclose a cause of the rapid increase of population dur- 

 ing the last century. The increased vitality of infants has made it 

 possible. With their rate of mortality cut in two a new era might 

 naturally arise. The English birth rate was higher in 1851 than in 

 1891, but the percentage of excess of births over deaths was greater 

 in the latter year. The fluctuations between these two dates indicate 

 the highest net increase as occurring during the decade 1871-80, but 



