complete, and the whole organism
is in a transition state. It is equally true that the use of any organ
before it has attained its complete growth or development is damaging
to that organ and interferes with its normal function, and "we cannot
but believe that children developed in immature sexual organs must be
deficient in true vital force and energy. It is often noticeable that
a child apparently strong and vigorous, may have but little power to
resist disease, or may even be strongly predisposed to some
infirmity." The colored women in the section under discussion who
become mothers, are usually multiporae long before the twenty-fifth
year.

(5) The element of overwork must come in for its increment of
responsibility in the excessive mortality of the Negro. While
deficiency in exercise favors a lack of nutrition conducive to wasting
in size, on the other hand too much work favors hypertrophy of vital
organs and tissue degeneration. The average healthy man should work
about eight hours per day and "should do work to the equivalent of 150
foot-tons daily." The American Negro's working hours, as a rule, are
regulated, if at all, by the exigencies of the work to be performed,
as it appears to an exacting employer.

(6) The kind of work performed by the Negroes in the Southern cities
includes all menial occupations, which conduce to accident and
exposure. The death-rate among the laboring class of any community,
irrespective and independent of its nationality, is necessarily
greater than that of the well-to-do leisure class.

(7) The manner of living of the majority of the colored people in the
cities of the South--which is sometimes the progeny of ignorance, but
oftener the result of necessity--is responsible, in a large measure,
for their high mortality. They are crowded together on back streets,
in lanes and ill-smelling bottoms, near ponds of stagnant water, on
the banks of rivers--wherever their scanty means consign them. The
ignorant among them, like the ignorant among any other people, ignore
the teachings of hygiene, because they are ignorant, and not because
they are black. They do not know the value of fresh air and sunlight
and cleanliness, and hence are ignorant of the fatality attached to
the unholy trinity--darkness, dampness and dirt, which is responsible
for the tuberculosis that is charged to their "inherent tendencies."
The pittance that is paid to the Negro in the name of wages forces him
to crowd