Note 38 — WILLIAM BENJAMIN SMITH (continued 3)

These are the "uncorrected rates" in the registration area. The rates corrected—on the basis of age distribution—are still far more ominous for the Negro. They are, in the entire registration area: for native Whites having one or both parents foreign, 187; for native Whites having both parents native, 166; for Negroids, 347.

"One is warranted, then, in saying that according to the best evidence obtainable the death rate of the negroes in the registration area is nearly double that of the whites in the same area."

"On these assumptions the computed death rate of the non-Caucasians in 1890 was 34.4 and in 1900, 34.2; of the whites in 1890, 19.5, and in 1900, 17.4. It seems not improbable that these figures may be trusted so far as they indicate that there has been a decline in the death rate of each race during the last ten years, that the decline among the negroes has been less rapid than that among the whites, and that the death rate of the negroes at the present time is about, but not quite, twice that of the white race." Census Bulletin 8, Negroes in the United States, p. 66a.

But as the death rate of the Negroes in 1890 was reckoned on a return of population almost certainly considerably too low, that rate was itself too high; the proper correction would probably bring the rate in 1890 even below that of 1900.