34 Henry Gannett — Movements of our Population. 



The following table and the diagram forming plate 11, figure 1, 

 represent the rates of increase of the two races : 



These rates of increase show that in only two decades of the 

 century have the colored apparently increased more rapidly than 

 the w'hites, the decades between 1800 and 1810 and between 

 1870 and 1880. The latter, however, is only an apparent excess, 

 due to w^holesale omissions in the enumeration of the colored 

 people in 1870. The colored race has almost continuously lost 

 ground in proportion to the white race throughout our history. 

 Although the birth rate of the race is decidedly larger than that 

 of the whites, its death rate, as is evidenced by the mortality 

 records of large southern cities, is still greater, being not much 

 less, on an average, than double the death rate of the whites. 



Since the time of the first records the colored race has been 

 practically confined to the southern states, as is shown by the 

 , map showing the distribution in 1890, where it has practically 

 monopolized labor. There has never been any northward move- 

 ment of this people of magnitude sufficient to be perceptible in 

 census returns. Indeed, the only important movement among 

 them is southward from the border states into those of the south- 

 ern Atlantic and Gulf, from the tobacco states into the cotton 

 states. 



Plate 11, figure 2, shows the present distribution of the race. In 

 the northern states the proportion is less than 5 per cent of the 

 population, in the border states it is less than 25 per cent, while 

 in the states along the Atlantic and Gulf from Virginia to 

 Louisiana it exceeds 25 per cent, and in three states. South 

 Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana, more than half the popu- 



