120 S. J. HOLMES 



than the Negroes. The more rapid increase of the white population of the 

 United States has been to a large extent due to an extensive foreign immi- 

 gration which, for a number of years before the great war, added over a 

 million of inhabitants per annum. This immigrant population was more 

 prolific than the native whites, although the native white population of the 

 south has continued to have a high birth rate. The rural south has fur- 

 nished an extensive breeding ground for white as well as Negro migrants, 

 for there has been a considerable exodus of whites into the north and west. 

 The same economic causes have been responsible for the migratory move- 

 ments of both races. Negro migrants, however, are more prone to go into 

 the cities than are the southern whites. In most northern states over 

 ninety per cent of the Negro population is urban. The inhabitants of 

 cities have long been characterized by high death rates and low birth rates, 

 but while urban death rates have fallen greatly in recent years urban birth 

 rates have also gone down, so that at present most cities which have a 

 surplus of births over deaths owe their natural increase to the exceptionally 

 favorable age composition of their population. 



The birth rate of most of our large cities is not sufficiently high to keep 

 them from decreasing in numbers, if their population were of normal age 

 distribution. Urban life has been relatively even more destructive to 

 Negroes than to whites. Up to 1920 deaths exceeded births in the Negro 

 population of most states and cities of the north. Northward migration had 

 proven a perilous adventure to the Negro race. The migrants, especially 

 in the war period, consisted of people in the adolescent and middle periods 

 of life. The age composition of northern Negroes as shown by the census 

 of 1920 was remarkably different from that of the southern Negroes in 

 having relatively few young children and in having a much larger proportion 

 of individuals in the child bearing age. Nevertheless at this time few 

 northern states showed more births than deaths in their Negro population. 

 I have calculated the stabilized rate of natural increase for 14 northern 

 states in 1920 and found that it falls far below the rate needed to maintain 

 the population without loss. 



The growth of our northern Negro population at least up to 1920 has been 

 dependent mainly upon migration. And the effect has been up to that time 

 racially destructive. It has drained off relatively larger and larger numbers 

 of Negroes in the most prolific periods of life and subjected them to the 

 sterilizing influences of the industrial north. The extent to which these 

 losses have been compensated for by an enhanced birth rate in southern 

 Negroes is uncertain. Between 1910 and 1920 some of the southern states, 

 notably Alabama, suffered an actual diminution of their Negro inhabitants. 



