er, very few of the boys and less than a fifth of
the Negro girls under twenty are married. The young men marry between
the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five; the young women between twenty
and thirty. Such postponement is due to the difficulty of earning
sufficient to rear and support a family; and it undoubtedly leads, in
the country districts, to sexual immorality. The form of this
immorality, however, is very seldom that of prostitution, and less
frequently that of illegitimacy than one would imagine. Rather, it
takes the form of separation and desertion after a family group has
been formed. The number of separated persons is thirty-five to the
thousand,--a very large number. It would of course be unfair to
compare this number with divorce statistics, for many of these
separated women are in reality widowed, were the truth known, and in
other cases the separation is not permanent. Nevertheless, here lies
the seat of greatest moral danger. There is little or no prostitution
among these Negroes, and over three-fourths of the families, as found
by house-to-house investigation, deserve to be classed as decent people
with considerable regard for female chastity. To be sure, the ideas of
the mass would not suit New England, and there are many loose habits
and notions. Yet the rate of illegitimacy is undoubtedly lower than in
Austria or Italy, and the women as a class are modest. The plague-spot
in sexual relations is easy marriage and easy separation. This is no
sudden development, nor the fruit of Emancipation. It is the plain
heritage from slavery. In those days Sam, with his master's consent,
"took up" with Mary. No ceremony was necessary, and in the busy life
of the great plantations of the Black Belt it was usually dispensed
with. If now the master needed Sam's work in another plantation or in
another part of the same plantation, or if he took a notion to sell the
slave, Sam's married life with Mary was usually unceremoniously broken,
and then it was clearly to the master's interest to have both of them
take new mates. This widespread custom of two centuries has not been
eradicated in thirty years. To-day Sam's grandson "takes up" with a
woman without license or ceremony; they live together decently and
honestly, and are, to all intents and purposes, man and wife.
Sometimes these unions are never broken until death; but in too many
cases family quarrels, a roving spirit, a rival suitor, or perhaps m