ent. The total valuation of land owned
by Negroes in the same counties for 1897, is $547,800, against
$496,385 for the year next preceding, a gain of $51,150, or more than
ten per cent. Their present property, as assessed in 1897, was
$517,560, in 1896, $527,688, a loss of $10,128. Combining the real and
personal property for 1897, we have $1,409,059, against $1,320,504 for
1896, a net gain of $88,555, an increase of six and one-half per cent.

"The records of Gloucester, Lancaster, Middlesex, Princess Anne,
Northumberland, Northampton, King and Queen, Essex, and Westmoreland,
where the colored population exceeds the white, show that the criminal
expense for 1896 was $14,313.29, but for 1897 it was only $8,538.12, a
saving of $5,774.17 to the State, or a falling off of forty per cent.
This does not tell the whole story. In the first named year twenty-six
persons were convicted of felonies, with sentences in the
penitentiary, while in the year succeeding only nine, or one-third as
many, were convicted of the graver offences of the law."

According to these returns, in 1892, when the colored people formed 41
per cent of the population, they owned 2.75 per cent of the total
number of acres assessed for taxation, and 3.40 per cent of the
buildings; in 1898, although not constituting more than 37 per cent of
the population (by reason of white immigration), they owned 3.23 per
cent of the acreage assessed, and 4.64 per cent of the buildings--a
gain of nearly one-third in six years.

According to statistics gathered by a graduate of the Hampton
Institute, in twelve counties in Virginia, there has been in the part
of the state covered by the investigation an increase of 5,379 acres
in the holdings of colored people, and an increase of $51,150 in the
value of their land. In nine counties there has been a decrease in the
number of persons charged with felonies and sent to the penitentiary
from twenty-six in 1896 to nine in 1897.

I do not believe that the Negro will grow weaker in morals and less
strong in numbers because of his immediate contact with the white
race. The first class life insurance companies are considered
excellent authorities as to the longevity of individuals and races;
and the fact that most of them now seek to insure the educated class
of blacks, is a good test of what these companies think, of the effect
of education upon the mortality of the race.

The case of Jamaica, in the West Indies, presents a go