508 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



marmfacturing and business classes. In the United States in 1850, 

 3.1 per cent, of white men having occupations were in the professions; 

 44.1 were engaged in agriculture, and 34.1 in trade, transporta- 

 tion, manufacturing and mechanical pursuits. The professional 

 classes have thus contributed in proportion to their numbers about 

 fourteen times as many scientific men as the others, the agricultural 

 classes only half as many as the manufacturing and trading classes. 

 The farm not only produces relatively fewer scientific men, but a 

 smaller proportion of them are of high distinction and a larger propor- 

 tion are in the lowest group. This traverses a common belief, as voiced, 

 for example, by Dr. Charles "W. Eliot, when he writes : 



The country breeding gives a vigor and an endurance which in the long run 

 outweigh all city advantages, and enable the well-endowed country boys to out- 

 strip their city-bred competitors.! 



The writer showed, however, in the previous paper that in proportion 

 to their population cities have produced twice as many scientific men as 

 the country. 



The four professions of divinity, medicine, law and teaching, with 

 a fifth group composed of the remaining professions — engineering, fine 

 arts, journalism, the government service, etc. — contribute numbers of 

 scientific men not far from equal. According to the census of 1850, 

 the numbers in the four learned professions were : Clergymen, 26,842 ; 

 lawyers, 23,939; physicians, 40,765; men teachers, 30,530. For each 

 thousand of their members, they contributed scientific men as follows : 



Clergymen 3.3 



Lawyers 2.5 



Teachers 2.4 



Physicians 1.6 



Clergymen,- therefore, have the best record, and physicians the worst. 

 Yet at that period there was supposed to be a conflict between science 

 and theology, and the work of the physician is, or should be, allied to, 

 if not identical with, that of the man of science. But in the middle of 

 the last century the clergymen were likely to be better educated and' 

 more closely identified with the colleges than the physicians. The 

 lavryers and the teachers were equally productive, but college professors 

 — of whom there were only 943 in 1850 — are far before any other class. 

 The group of '' other professions " is too ill defined to permit statistical 

 treatment. In the census of 1850, mechanics who ran engines were 

 called engineers and included among the professions. It will be noted 

 from the table that lawyers and teachers have contributed the largest 



1 ' ' Family Stocks in a Democracy, ' ' American Contributions to Civilization, 

 1898. 



