434 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



for an example, shows, from 1830 to 1840, an increase of only one 

 half per cent for the whites, and three per cent for the blacks, while for 

 Arkansas the corresponding figures are two hundred and six per cent, 

 and three hundred and thirty-two per cent. Only when States have 

 been fairly settled, and peculiar causes affecting population removed, 

 does an enumeration reveal the natural increase of a people ; and this, 

 as a wide and accurate observation in the United States has shown, 

 can not be, under the most favorable circumstances, above thirty-five 

 per cent at least for the white race. 



Thoughtful minds awaited with special interest the results of the 

 census for 1880. It closed the first decade of freedom for the blacks ; 

 and whether this race, under its new conditions, was an increasing or 

 decreasing one whether it was increasing more rapidly than the 

 whites, or otherwise these were questions of critical and far-reaching 

 importance. 



It is seen that over the United States the gain for the whites has 

 been twenty-nine per cent, that for the blacks thirty-four per cent, and 

 that the latter is by much the highest figure reached by the blacks in 

 the several decades. Referring to the figures of the last decade, be- 

 longing to the States, it is further seen that, while the gain in all 

 these States, both for white and black, is remarkably high, the gain in 

 several instances as in the case of Arkansas^ South Carolina, and 

 Mississippi (for the blacks) is too high to be credible, transcending as 

 it does the natural procreative power of the most prolific race. (The 

 reader will remember that from 1870 to 1880 the population of these 

 States received little or no accession from immigration.) The gain in 

 population, immediately succeeding a continued and desolating Mar, 

 must be more or less abnormally large. It is readily accounted for 

 by the separation of husbands and wives, the procrastination of mar- 

 riage on the part of the young, and the prevailing destitution, at least 

 comparative destitution, accompanying a state of war. But, with 

 every allowance on these grounds, the rate of increase in the States 

 just mentioned remains incredible, and either the census for 1870, or 

 that for 1880, must be in error. 



The error is doubtless in the former. The census for 1870 was 

 made under the old law of 1850, a law which those well qualified to 

 judge deem, in some important particulars, grossly defective. Again, 

 the enumerators were, for the most part, negroes, often ignorant and 

 inefficient ; and it is on evidence that the enumeration of coixnties (at 

 least as regards South Carolina) was not unfrequently made at court 

 sessions and on muster-grounds, and not by a house-to-house canvass. 

 The exceedingly high rate of increase in South Carolina as a State, 

 and particularly in certain districts thereof, induced the Census Super- 

 intendent for 1880 to send thither a special agent, for the purpose of 

 ascertaining the facts. Not all the State was canvassed, but enough 

 to substantially verify the census for 1880 ; and this, with the further 



