122 
second was indicated. Thus far no 
evidence has been produced, I believe, 
showing that the increase is greatest 
where amalgamation of races is probably 
affecting the largest proportion of the 
population or where the lack of adapta- 
tion to a developing civilization is 
greatest. 
An influence upon mortality which the 
United States is in a more favorable 
position to investigate is that of race. 
Under this term I do not include those 
residents in the United States who or 
whose progenitors were born in a certain 
country or spoke a certain language, 
like the Scandinavians or the French 
Canadians. At some future time we 
may be able to investigate the death rate 
of groups like those, although the present 
position and sluggish development of 
American vital statistics make one fear 
that the facts may become inaccessible 
before the country is ready to study 
them. I refer here to the two great 
races of white and colored, which 
include between them more than 99% 
of our population. The registration 
States of 1900 contained in that year 
19,544,821 whites and 388,198 Negroes 
and many more in 1910, groups large 
enough and coming from States widely 
enough scattered to make the changes 
in their death rates between 1900 and 
1910 somewhat representative of the 
changes in the whole country. 
DEATH AMONG NEGROES 
The death rate of whites in these 
States fell from 17.0 in 1900 to 15.5 in 
1910, a decrease of 1.5 per thousand, or 
8.8% of the initial rate. Meantime the 
death rate of Negroes in the same States 
fell from 25.6 in 1°00 to 25.0 in 1910, a 
decrease of 0.6 per thousand, or 2.4%. 
These figures show that the fall in the 
death rate during the decade was more 
than twice as great among whites as 
among Negroes. Stating the same 
change in another way, the death rate 
among Negroes in these States exceeded 
that among whites by 51% in 1900 and 
61% in 1910. 
But to compare the two races in this 
way and stop without noting whether 
5 Fisher and Fisk, How to Live, p. 282. 
azine Supplement, December 19, 1915. 
See 
The Journal of Heredity 
significant differences exist between the 
age and sex composition of the two 
groups might easily lead us into error. 
‘hus among the whites 50.5%, but 
among the Negroes only 48.3% were 
male. As the female death rate is 
lower than the male the true difference 
between the death rate of the races 
would probably be greater than the 
foregoing figures indicate. Even more 
important is the fact that of the whites 
21.5%, but of the Negroes only 16.1% 
are either children under 5 or aged 
(55+) and have the high death rate 
characteristic of infancy and old age. 
Probably the best way to measure the 
effect of these differences in sex and age 
composition is to compute standardized 
death rates for each race. When the 
death rates of each race for a given sex 
and age are applied to the population 
of the same sex and age in a standard 
million distributed as in the registration 
States of 1900, the standardized death 
rate in 1910 is found to be 15.5 for 
whites and 27.5 instead of 25.0 for 
Negroes, showing that the corrected 
death rate of Negroes exceeds that of 
whites by 12.0 per 1,000, or 78%, 
instead of 9.5 per 1,000, the difference of 
the crude rates. The corresponding 
standardized death rates in 1900 were 
16.9 for whites instead of 17.0 and 29.0 
for Negroes instead of 25.6, showing a 
fall during the decade of 1.4 per 1,000 
for whites and 1.5 per 1,000 for Negroes. 
But in 1900 the standardized Negro 
death rate exceeded that of the whites 
by 72% as compared with 78% im 
1910. The standardized death rate 
among female Negroes exceeds that 
among female whites by 61% in 1900 
and by 72% in 1910, while the difference 
among males was 69% in 1600 and 84% 
in 1910, showing that the difference 
between the males of the two races is 
greater and increasing more rapidly 
than among the females. The death 
rate of each race is falling, but the gap 
separating the two races has seemingly 
grown wider. Before the Civil War, 
according to what evidence we have, the 
death rate of Negroes exceeded that of 
whites by 29.8% of the lower rate, and 
also Lewinski-Corwin in New York Times, Mag- 
