"I have no time to go into the complex statistical evidence bearing upon the vitality of the Negro race, and its power to meet successfully the increasing industrial competition, to which it must be exposed, as these States fill with people, as cities spring up and prosper, and as industry, trade and agriculture become diversified and more complex. The balance of the evidence, however, seems to me to indicate for the future a continuance of changes already begun, viz., a decrease in the Negro birth-rate decidedly more rapid than the actual present or probable future decrease in the death-rate. This would result obviously in a slackening rate of increase, and then in a stationary condition, followed by slow numerical retrogression. If this anticipation should be realized, the Negroes will continue to become, as they are now becoming, a steadily smaller proportion of the population. "The final outcome, though its realization may be postponed for centuries, will be, I believe, that the race will follow the fate of the Indians, that the great majority will disappear before the whites, and that the remnant found capable of elevation to the level of the white man's civilization will ultimately be merged and lost in the lower classes of the whites, leaving almost no trace to mark their former existence. "Where such a lower people has disappeared, the causes of their death have been mainly disease, vice and profound discouragement. It seems to me clear that each one of these causes is affecting the Negro race far more deeply and unfavorably at the present time than it was at the date of their emancipation. The medical evidence available points to the conclusion that they are more than ever afflicted with the scourges of disease, such as typhoid fever and consumption, and with the physical ills entailed by sexual vice. I have argued elsewhere to show that both in the North and in the South crime among the Negroes is rapidly increasing. Whether the race as a whole is as happy, as joyous, as confident of the future, or thoughtless of it, as it was before the war, you, my hearers, know far better than I. I can only say that in my studies I have found not one expression of dissent from the opinion that the joyous buoyancy of the race is passing away; that they feel upon them a burden of responsibility to which they are unequal; that the lower classes of Negroes are resentful, and that the better classes [are] not certain or sanguine of the outcome. If this judgment be true, I can only say that it is perhaps the most fatal source of race as of national decay and death."