(7) The manner of living of the majority of the colored people in the cities of the South--which is sometimes the progeny of ignorance, but oftener the result of necessity--is responsible, in a large measure, for their high mortality. They are crowded together on back streets, in lanes and ill-smelling bottoms, near ponds of stagnant water, on the banks of rivers--wherever their scanty means consign them. The ignorant among them, like the ignorant among any other people, ignore the teachings of hygiene, because they are ignorant, and not because they are black. They do not know the value of fresh air and sunlight and cleanliness, and hence are ignorant of the fatality attached to the unholy trinity--darkness, dampness and dirt, which is responsible for the tuberculosis that is charged to their "inherent tendencies." The pittance that is paid to the Negro in the name of wages forces him to crowd together in narrow and ill-ventilated sleeping apartments, which is decidedly unhealthful and favors the spread of contagious diseases. Thus smallpox spreads rapidly in a Negro settlement, not because they are Negroes, but because their manner of living brings them into the most intimate contact with one another, so that whatever disease attacks one, rapidly spreads to all of the others who are not immune. The lack of suitable clothing and proper food, as a result of poverty, weakens the Negro physically. The neglect of the bath through lack of time, is responsible for much of the heart, kidney and skin diseases so prevalent among the laboring classes of the colored people. It takes time to keep clean, and the laborer has no leisure. Ignorance of the seriousness of certain diseases like syphilis, scrofula and rheumatism, has played an important role in the drama of his mortality. (8) Another fruitful cause of his excessive mortality arises out of his _struggle for existence_. The exigencies of life are such with him that he does not heed the admonitions of nature made manifest in the early symptoms of disease, so that unwittingly he becomes habituated to discomfort and pain. When the common Negro laborer lays aside his implements of labor on account of sickness, the disease with which he is affected is well founded and passed beyond the abortive and often the curative stage, and very frequently when medical advice is obtained, it is of the dispensary or "physician to the poor" type, which too often savors of unconcern, inexperience and incompetency. (9) The prevalent habit among the colored people of taking patented cure-all nostrums, which contain narcotics that insidiously benumb the sensibilities and mask the symptoms of disease, would naturally contribute to the mortality of any people.