The American negro, after the turmoil of Civil War and reconstruction, found himself thrown on his own resources as he had never been before. This occurred at the beginning of a period of rapid, almost revolutionary, industrial change in the South, a change which did not at first affect seriously the staple crops upon which most of the negro’s labor as a slave had been spent, but which apparently is beginning to affect even those. In seeking other avenues of self-support than agriculture and domestic service, he is seriously handicapped by unfamiliarity with such work, a lack of native aptitude for it, so it is alleged, absence of the capital often requisite, and a preference on the part of most of the whites, even when other things are equal, as they seldom are, to employ members of their own race. In the industrial competition thus begun the negro seems during the last decade to have slightly lost ground in most of those higher occupations in which the services are rendered largely to whites. He has gained in the two so-called learned professions of teachers and clergymen. He has gained in the two skilled occupations of miner or quarryman and iron or steel worker. He has gained in the occupations, somewhat ill-defined so far as the degree of skill required is indicated, of sawing or planing, mill employee, and nurse or midwife. He has gained in the class of servants and waiters. On the other side of the balance sheet he has lost ground in the South as a whole in the following skilled occupations: carpenter, barber, tobacco and cigar factory operative, fisherman, engineer or fireman (not locomotive) and probably blacksmith. He has lost ground also in the following industries in which the degree of skill implied seems somewhat uncertain: laundry work, hackman or teamster, steam railroad employee, housekeeper or steward. The balance seems not favorable. It suggests that in the competition with white labor to which the negro is being subjected he has not quite held his own. These figures of occupations seem to me to furnish the best statistical clue yet obtained for an understanding of the industrial and social changes affecting this question in the South. My interpretation of their meaning might be objected to on the ground that when the negroes are increasing more slowly than the whites, as they are at present in the South, it should not be expected that they would increase as fast as whites in the skilled occupations. This objection seems to me to invert the true order of causation, to put the cart before the horse. Should we not rather say that southern negroes are increasing at the present time only two-thirds as fast as southern whites, while from 1800 to 1840 they increased faster and from 1840 to 1880 nearly as fast, because they are not succeeding in entering new occupations or prospering as well in their old as the competing race is doing?