436 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



diately after emancipation was a condition adverse to his increase. The 

 absence of thrift, energy, and management, many think, marks negro 

 character at its best. It is certain that the contraries to these quali- 

 ties had, under a long condition of servitude, been abnormally devel- 

 oped. Emancipation found the negro without the master's care (and, 

 as a body, slaveholders, at least from motives of self-interest, were 

 humane), without the customary oversight and medical attention, de- 

 pendent, not self-reliant. No wonder that many of the negroes have 

 been worse off than under their former bondage ; that the burden of 

 life has been so often excessive ; that infanticide has been so often 

 resorted to, to lessen it ; and that death from want and exposure has 

 been so exceptionally frequent. A body of four million slaves, igno- 

 rant, uncivilized, and trained in habits of dependence, suddenly set 

 free, then invested with the ballot, and intoxicated with political 

 power, then checked, and in many instances violently checked, by 

 the necessary and wholesome self-assertion of the white race, that 

 they should have increased as they have done is astonishing, and can 

 be accounted for only by the remarkable fecundity of the African. 

 For the future the adverse influence to population, arising from this 

 cause, will become less and less potent. The negro, adjusted to his 

 surroundings, will work with more ease and effect. He is ascending 

 from the lowest round. Education must give him increased power to 

 accumulate, experience must improve his thrift, and, life passing under 

 better conditions, it is reasonable to think that in subsequent decades 

 he will add five per cent of increase to that of the past. We put this 

 rate at thirty -five per cent. 



The gain for the whites in the last decade is very nearly thirty per 

 cent. This is to be docked in the Southern States to the extent of 

 five per cent for the error in the census of 1870. Since, however, this 

 error appertains only to the twelve million Southern whites, and the 

 census in regard to the thirty million Northern whites is accepted as 

 correct, the rate of increase for the total white population is a frac- 

 tion under twenty-nine per cent. Of this at least nine per cent should 

 be attributed to immigration. Immigration is now, and for a year or 

 two past has been, largely in excess of this figure, but probably not 

 for the past decade ; and the resultant is a gain of twenty per cent 

 for the entire native white population. 



There is a wide, and, at first view, startling difference between the 

 twenty per cent for the whites and the thirty-five per cent for the 

 blacks. The solution is found in the superior fecundity of the latter. 

 This superiority, while it belongs to the blacks as a race, is strength- 

 ened for them 1. As being the laboring class ; 2. As laboring under 

 favorable climatic conditions ; that is to say, living in a semi-tropical 

 region. 



The laboring class is naturally the more fruitful class. In the 

 case of a laboring woman the child-bearing period is greater by a 



