THE EFFECT OF MIGRATION ON THE NATURAL INCREASE OF 



THE NEGRO 



S. J. HOLMES 



University of California, Berkeley, California 



Ever since the period of emancipation there has been an influx of southern 

 Negroes into the northern states. During the great war the influx swelled 

 to the proportions of an extensive mass movement. To judge from the 

 returns of the 1930 census the migration continued on a fairly extensive 

 scale, although it was less than the trek during the war. Migration is 

 frequently an aid to the increase of a people because the losses in its own 

 territory are quickly made good, while the migrants enable the stock to 

 multiply beyond its former borders. Migration has contributed greatly 

 to the increase of the Anglo-Saxons, Scandanavians, Spanish, Italians, Por- 

 tuguese, and other European peoples. The compulsory migration of 

 African slaves into various lands has been a potent aid to the numerical 

 increase of the Negro race. What will be the biological effect of the migra- 

 tion of Negroes within the confines of the United States? 



I need not dwell upon the great importance of this question in relation to 

 the struggle between whites and blacks for numerical supremacy. One 

 important factor in the issue of this struggle is doubtless climate. In 

 Haiti, Jamaica, Guadeloupe, the Barbadoes and parts of Brazil the Negroes 

 have proven victors over their Indian and white competitors. Parts of 

 our own southern states have followed a somewhat similar course. There 

 are black areas in which over 90 per cent of the inhabitants are Negroes, 

 and for many years Negroes in Mississippi have outnumbered the whites. 

 But notwithstanding the high birth rate of the southern Negroes, the whites 

 in most parts of the south have outbred their Negro rivals. This fact is 

 largely the result of their lower infant and child mortality. Although the 

 birth rate of the Negroes in the Birth Registration Area is in general higher 

 than that of the whites, the relatively high Negro mortality more than 

 overcomes the initial advantage of their higher birth rate. The census of 

 1930, like that of 1920, shows that the ratio of children under five years of 

 age to women of the child bearing period is greater in the native whites 

 than in the Negroes. This is true for both the north and the south. Un- 

 questionably the whites in the United States are increasing more rapidly 



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