While the future of the negro race in the United States seems to be essentially an industrial and economic question, turning upon their efficiency in comparison with classes of the population who compete with them in their staple occupations, the net results of these various and complex industrial changes can perhaps best be measured by the _vital statistics_ of the race. The Census Bureau has no direct information regarding births or marriages. Its information regarding deaths is confined to the negro population living in the registration area and amounting to between one-seventh and one-eighth (13.4 per cent.) of the entire negro population of the country, over 93 per cent. of it living in cities. The death-rate of negroes in the registration area in 1900 was reported as 30.2 per thousand, that of the whites in the same area being 17.3. But of the negroes in this area the majority were female and the female is the healthier sex. They were also predominantly adult and the adult years are the healthier ages. To allow for these differences a computation has been made to ascertain what the death-rate for the negroes for the whole country would be, if the death-rate observed in the registration area for each sex and each age had been true of the negroes of that sex and age in the country as a whole. On this basis the estimated negro death-rate of the United States as a whole is 34.2 instead of 30.2, or just about double that of the whites. In 1890 the death-rate of the negroes in the registration area as distinguished from the Indians and Mongolians was not computed. That of the three races combined, nineteen-twentieths being negroes, was in 1890 29.9, and in 1900,29.6 per thousand, a decrease of three deaths per 10,000. In the same area the death-rate of whites in 1890 was 19.1 and in 1900, 17.3, a decrease of 18 per 10,000. It is uncertain how far these figures may be accepted as indicative of the actual changes. They are submitted not as entirely trustworthy, but as the best information available. Indirect evidence of the birth-rate among the negroes may be obtained by computing the number of children under five years of age to each 1,000 women fifteen to forty-four. These computations show a very marked decline between 1880 and 1900 in the proportion of negro children, but show that the proportion of children at the present time is greater for negroes than for whites.