THE AFRICAN IN THE UNITED STATES. 437 



number of years than in one more delicately reared. Again, in esti- 

 mating fecundity, the pain and danger attendant upon parturition are 

 factors, and its comparative ease to the laboring woman, contrasted 

 with the profound and long-continued prostration it brings to the lady 

 of tender palms and jeweled fingers, is well known. 



Again, the African on climatic grounds finds in the Southern coun- 

 try a more congenial home. In many districts there, and these by far 

 the most fertile, the white man is unable to take the field and have 

 health. It is otherwise with the African, who, the child of the sun, 

 gathers strength and multiplies in these low, hot, feverish regions. 



The wide advantage, therefore, in the rate of increase on the side 

 of the African finds its solution in a superior natural fecundity, exert- 

 ing itself under these favoring conditions. 



Now mark the following: The white population, increasing at 

 the rate of twenty per cent in ten years, or two per cent per annum, 

 doubles itself every thirty-five years. The black, increasing at the 

 rate of thirty-five per cent in ten years, or three and a half per cent 

 per annum, doubles itself in twenty years. Hence we find : 







Whites in United States in 1880 (in round numbers) 42.000,000 



" 1915 " " 84,000,000 



" " 1950 " " 168,000,000 



" " 19S5 " " 336,000,000 



Northern whites in 1880 30,000,000 



" " 1915 60,000,000 



" " 1950 120,000,000 



" " 1985 240,000,000 



Southern whites in 1880 12,000,000 



" " 1915 24,000,000 



" " 1950 48,000,000 



" " 19S5 96,000,000 



Blacks in Southern States in 1880 6,000,000 



" " " 1900 12,000,000 



" " " 1920 24,000,000 



" " " 1940 48,000,000 



" " " 1960 96,000,000 



" " " 1980 192,000,000 



Our interest is in the progress of population in the Southern States, 

 where the blacks almost altogether now are, and where they will con- 

 tinued to be massed more and more ; and above stand the significant 

 figures. These will be modified more or less by disturbing causes, the 

 most prominent being immigration. But even should immigration 

 ever take a pronounced Southern direction, yet immigration must 

 slacken, and before many years practically cease, while the black 

 growth must be perpetually augmenting, perpetually advancing its 

 volume ; and, every allowance being made, it is morally certain that, 

 in seventy or eighty years (as things now go) the blacks in every 

 Southern State will overwhelmingly preponderate. 



