The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1897-07-07
FATE Of The COLORED RACE.
FIGURE SHOW IT TO BE on THE
DOWN GRADE,
An Insurance Statistician Presents
Interesting Facts. COnsump-
tiOn Takes OFF Many.

The white population in Augusta.
Ga, numbers about $4,000, against ?
negro population of $4,000; yet lust
twice as many negroes died of con
sumption in that city last year as
whites-the colored victims of the dis
ease numbering 81 to 80 whites. The
president of the local board of health,
DR.. Eugene Foster, in giving out these
facts, states that before the war con-
sumption was rare among the blacks.
and d negro with consumption was a
clinical curiosity. "This new suscepti-
bility of the negro race to consump-
ton, he says, lis one of the numer-
Gus penalties following upon the
changed relations Of this people con-
,eguent on their emancipation.
There appears among the recent
publications Of the American EcOnom-
ic Association a volume of over 300
pages on Race Traits and Tendencies
Of the American Negro" in which the
physical degeneration of the cOlored
race since emancipation seems to be
abundantly proved. This is an ex-
haustive and most interesting treatise.
The author, Frederick L. Hoffman. is
statistician for one of the large insur-
ance companies, and his freedom from
prejudice and personal bias in the mat
ter is supposed to be guaranteed by
the fact of German nativity. His con-
illusions are based on the most ample
statistical information Obtainable from
great variety of sources, and they are
thus summed up:
Nothing is more clearly shown from
this Investigation than that the south
ern black man at the time of enamel
patton was healthy in body and cheer
full in mind. He neither suffered in
0r1inately from disease, nor from i'm
paired bodily vigOr, His industrial
capabilities as a IabOrer were not of a
low order, nor was the condition of
secy,tude such as to produce in him
morbid conditions favorable to mental
disease, suicide or intemperance.
What are the conditions after a lapse
%. thirty years? The pages Of this
work give but one ansWer-an answer
which is most severe condemnation
of modern attempts of superior races
81 lift inferior races to their own ele-
waited position; an answer so full of
meaning that it would seem criminal
Indifference on the part Of a civilized !
people to ignore it. In the plain Ian |
guage of the facts brought together |
the colored race is shown to be on the |
downward grade, tending toward
condition in which matters will be |
worse than they are now, when dis |
ease will be most destructive, vital re-
sistance still lower, when the number
of births will fall below low the deaths,
gradual extinction of the race take
place. x Unless change |
takes place, a change that will strike |
at the fundamental errors that under
lie the conduct Of the higher races to-
ward the lower, and gradual extinction
only question of time.
We make no question that the vices
OF civilization have fallen upon the
emancipated negro with terrible force |
Where adequate resistance was not in |
The nature of things to be expected |
But how far is physical degeneracy |
que to these causes, and how far to |
ptAer causes which were operative |
prior to emancipation, or such as now
"ay be cIassed as preventable? The |
Augusta physician states that con-
sumption was practically unknown
among the colored people before the
war, and the whole present alarming
progress of the disease is attributed to
..'s "cV or condition of freedom. Now
'roe that consumption has in
VI V"sr' among the blacks in recent
''"''' out 1t is not true that the dis
7 was lnfrequent before the war,
"oItman presents a table, derived
oppose, from reliable sources, Civ
ny Ihe death rate from consumption
o onn,ll the two races per 100000 of
Equation in Charleston for a period
ore the war and since:
,Aho' WHITE. COLORED.
IoZZ-3O ,... 457 447
l831-40 38i 200
~lS2l-4S. 9e8 9G6
1864 198 4II
lS75-Q4 49,