_Conclusions from Negro Vital Statistics._ Three important conclusions may be drawn from the negro vital and population statistics which are well worth emphasizing. (1) The negro population is not increasing so fast as the white, owing largely to its high death rate, yet it is increasing, and there is no indication as yet that the negro population will decrease. It is probable, indeed, that at the end of the twentieth century the negro population of the United States will be between twenty and thirty millions. The view of some students of the negro problem that the negro is destined to an early extinction in this country is merely a speculative hypothesis, and as yet is not substantiated by any statistical facts. (2) While the negro is destined to be with us always, so far as we can see, yet owing to the fact of intermixture of races he will be less and less a pure negro, so that at the end of the twentieth century the negroes in the United States will be much nearer the white type than at the present time. (3) The high death rate among the negroes indicates that a rapid process of natural selection is going on among them. Now, natural selection means the elimination of the unfit,--the dying out of those who cannot adapt themselves to their environment. This selective process will tend toward the survival of the more fit elements among the negroes, and, therefore, towards bringing the negro up to the standard of the whites. The misery and vice which we see among the present American negroes are simply in a large degree the expression of the working of a process of natural selection among them. It would be preferable, however, if the white race could by education and other means substitute to some degree at least artificial selection for the miseries and brutality of the natural process of eliminating the unfit. This the superior race should do to protect itself as well as to raise the negro. Industrial Conditions Among the Negroes.--Recently a committee of the American Economic Association estimated that all of the taxable property in the United States owned by negroes amounted to $300,000,000, or about $33.00 per head,--this estimate being based upon the 1900 census returns. Thirty-three dollars per head of the negro population seems of course very small when compared to the $1,000.00 per capita owned by the whites; but we must remember that the negro at his emancipation was in no way equipped to acquire property, and, with the exception of a few freedmen, the negro at the close of the war had no property whatsoever. In a few cases their old masters set up the emancipated negroes with small farms. In 1900 there were 746,715 farms occupied by negroes either as tenants or owners. Twenty-five per cent of these farms were owned by negroes and about ten per cent were owned unencumbered.