Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 November 1901 — DISTRIBUTION OF NEGROES. [ARTICLE]

DISTRIBUTION OF NEGROES.

In Some Southern States They Are Becoming Very Numerous. The result of the last census shows that, taking the whole country together, the Colored population is not increasing at a rate greater than the white, and that the fears formerly expressed in this regard were quite groundless. In some states, however, the colored people are becoming disproportionately numerous—in South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia and Arkansas, for example. The census brings out two main tendencies. The first is the gradual concentration of the blacks in certain regions and the second is their concentration in cities. City life is very hazardous for the negro race, as the colored people live in unsanitary dwellings and under poor conditions. In Chicago, for example, more than 14,000 negroes are huddled together, and here, as in many other cities of the North, the negroes constitute an undue proportion of the criminal class. The fertility of the blacks is greater than that of the whites, but their mortality is much greater also, so that their increase is considerably less. Taking ten of the largest citieb of the South it appears that the mortality of the blacks is 32 per 1,000, and of the whites only 20, and there are indications that the former mortality is increasing, not diminishing Five counties in Virginia now inhabited by 69,000 blacks and 52.000 whites produce today 12.000.000 pounds of tobacco, instead of 32,000,000, their former yield. Four counties of Kentucky, inhabited by 81.000 whites and 5,500 blacks, have, on the other hand, increased the yield from 90.000 to 10,000.000 pounds in the same period. In the whole of Virginia, where the blacks constitute 38 per cent of the population, the tobacco crop has fallen from 121,000.000 to 48,000.000 pounds in the last thirty years; in Kentucky, where the blacks constitute 14 per cent it has risen from 108,000.000 to 221,000,000. Rice culture in South Carolina and Georgia is subject to similar losses owing to the uncertainty of negro labor. The cotton culture is passing into the hands of the whites, before the ciyil war this crop was entirely raised by black la-' bor, while at present 40 per cent is raised by whites. From 1891 to 1895 there was no increase in the holdings of land by the blacks In. Virginia, and the same is probably true for other southern states.