together in narrow and ill-ventilated sleeping apartments,
which is decidedly unhealthful and favors the spread of contagious
diseases. Thus smallpox spreads rapidly in a Negro settlement, not
because they are Negroes, but because their manner of living brings
them into the most intimate contact with one another, so that whatever
disease attacks one, rapidly spreads to all of the others who are not
immune.

The lack of suitable clothing and proper food, as a result of poverty,
weakens the Negro physically. The neglect of the bath through lack of
time, is responsible for much of the heart, kidney and skin diseases
so prevalent among the laboring classes of the colored people. It
takes time to keep clean, and the laborer has no leisure. Ignorance of
the seriousness of certain diseases like syphilis, scrofula and
rheumatism, has played an important role in the drama of his
mortality.

(8) Another fruitful cause of his excessive mortality arises out of
his _struggle for existence_. The exigencies of life are such with him
that he does not heed the admonitions of nature made manifest in the
early symptoms of disease, so that unwittingly he becomes habituated
to discomfort and pain. When the common Negro laborer lays aside his
implements of labor on account of sickness, the disease with which he
is affected is well founded and passed beyond the abortive and often
the curative stage, and very frequently when medical advice is
obtained, it is of the dispensary or "physician to the poor" type,
which too often savors of unconcern, inexperience and incompetency.

(9) The prevalent habit among the colored people of taking patented
cure-all nostrums, which contain narcotics that insidiously benumb the
sensibilities and mask the symptoms of disease, would naturally
contribute to the mortality of any people.

(10) Not the least fruitful of all of the causes of the Negro's
excessive mortality, is a lack of _resistance_ to disease, engendered
by the social conditions that obtain in the Southland. There he is so
oppressed and persecuted that he finds himself not only an easy prey
to disease, but an early victim to death. He has little to live for,
and his religion promises him much after death, which, in a sense, he
welcomes as a relief from his trials and troubles. This statement will
not appear exaggerated when one considers the powerful influence that
the mind has over the body. A cheerful, hopeful, contented mind,
predisposes t