Unquestionably, a certain proportion of the Negro race has risen notably since the era of emancipation. A proportion of the colored population—that is, the upper fraction—have not only accumulated property but have, mainly in the cities and towns, attained a higher standing, based partly on property, partly on character, and partly on intellectual advance. But, unless the universal testimony of the white people of the South is unreliable, this rise is confined largely to those regions where the Negroes have had the aid, sympathy, and encouragement of the whites. And it appears to the writer that this element is not as large as is generally assumed, and that this very advance has separated them all the more widely from the great body of the colored race. Study of the question, moreover, discloses the fact that almost all of the intellectual advance in the Negro race is confined to this upper fraction of the race; that, perhaps, nine-tenths of the property accumulated has been accumulated by this class and by the other fraction which belongs to the second class who were trained in slavery, and that, measured by the ordinary standards of character, intellect, and civic standing, the other nine-tenths of the race, so far from advancing in any way, have either stood stagnant or have retrograded. According to the United States Census of 1890, the native white criminals in the United States numbered 40,471; the native whites whose parents were also native-born numbered 21,037; the Negro criminals (whose parents were native) numbered 24,277.[34] A comparison of the rural colored population will show that possibly over ninety per cent. of the property now owned by the Negroes has been accumulated by those who were either trained in slavery or grew up immediately after the war, so that they received the beneficial effects of the habits of industry in which their race was at that time trained. It will show in the next place that the proportion of convicts in the State penitentiaries in the Southern States from the Negroes is from 85 to 93 per cent. of the total number of convicts confined. In Louisiana the proportion is 85 per cent. of all State criminals. In Alabama it is 85.4 per cent. In Florida, 86.4 per cent. In Mississippi it is 91 per cent. In Georgia it is 90 per cent., and in South Carolina it is 93.2 per cent.[35] In the District of Columbia, where the Negroes are assumed to have had exceptional advantages and where possibly a certain element of them are as well off as anywhere in the country, they furnished, a year or two ago, 86 per cent. of the criminals. Of these convicts, more than nine-tenths have grown up since slavery was abolished.