The system of education in vogue in Southern cities will work slowly
because up to the beginning of the twentieth century, school
attendance has not been made compulsory. There are no truant schools,
no reform schools. Idleness tends to vice. Idleness and vice are in no
way conducive to health and longevity.

Many Negroes do not want education for themselves nor for their
children. These people swell the death lists in Southern cities'
health offices to such distressingly large numbers. They are often
cared for and buried by funds from the city treasury. Would it not pay
to try compulsory education? To try teaching them to help themselves,
to save themselves?

To say that the home life of the masses must be improved is but
another way of saying they must be educated.

Among the most potent forces in the uplift of a people are the school,
the press, the courts and the church.

Under a system of compulsory education, the Negro would much sooner
learn to observe the laws of health and thus to extend his life.

When newspapers in Southern cities are fairer in their attitude toward
the black citizen, he will become a better citizen. It will increase
his respect for others and greatly increase his self respect. He will
then make more effort to live and to live well, because his life will
seem more worth living.

Every state included under the "Land of the free and the home of the
brave" should strive to make its criminal laws reformative rather than
revengeful. A very considerable number of Southern Negroes come to
their life's end in the prisons, which in no Southern state are all
that prisons should be. From a health standpoint, most of them are all
that prisons should not be.

It pays the municipality better to educate and reform its citizens
than to convict and execute them.

A cultivated, spiritual ministry will emphasize the best teaching of
the schools.

An active church will sustain a fair press; will uphold law and order;
will supplement the work of the good doctor and in various ways try to
reduce the number of funerals among the Negro population in Southern
cities.

SECOND PAPER.

WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF THE GREAT MORTALITY AMONG THE NEGROES IN THE
CITIES OF THE SOUTH, AND HOW IS THAT MORTALITY TO BE LESSENED?

BY HON. H. A. RUCKER.

[Illustration: Hon. H. A. Rucker.]

MR. H. A. RUCKER.

Out of the Southland--that awful crucible of prejudice and
proscriptio