homes--no, their houses, partly because of circumstances beyond their
control and partly on account of their improvident natures, are little
more than shelters or huts.

These houses are built in what is known or accepted as Negro tenant
districts, and those acquainted with the localities need no evidence
to convince them that they are not sought as either health or pleasure
resorts. They are the city alley ways and the low malarial districts
where the noxious gases and foul vapors rise from emptying sewers.
More than two hundred years' application has made the Negroes
agriculturists; they have been accustomed to labor and to plenty of
nature's fresh, invigorating air; they have, because of conditions not
proper to treat here, drifted from the farms and fields into the
crowded cities, thence into the slums, to be infected with disease.

They have been thrust into prisons where they were provided with the
poorest of covering and meanest food for their bodies; where scurvy
and other loathsome diseases have made their impress upon them and
where incentive to cleanliness is as distant as the North and South
poles. Freed from prison life they have gone forth mingling with a
class of people infecting them with their scales and spreading disease
and death.

Then again the race is without proper places to care for its
unfortunate, aged and infirm; without orphanages, reformatories and
homes for its friendless. Institutions which are potent factors in the
efforts of a people to prevent neglect and cure criminal tendencies.

All of these conditions are breeders of ills and conductors of death
which must be and happily are being abated.

The remedy suggested is a knowledge coupled with an appreciation of
health. Both to embrace the science of health preserving and of health
getting; better homes and better habits, even to being "temperate in
all things."

Acquired, accepted and practiced the mortality of the race will be
materially lessened.

THIRD 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 DR. JOHN R. FRANCIS.

[Illustration: Dr. John R. Francis]

DR. JOHN R. FRANCIS.

Dr. John R. Francis, physician and surgeon, was born in
Georgetown, D. C., in 1856. He attended the private and
public schools of Washington, D. C., until his sixteenth
year. His academic education was rece