AMERICAN MEN OF SCIEN'CE 



795 



will in paxt .supplant the descendants of 

 native Americans. It is, however, the case 

 that immigrants are likely to become as- 

 similated to native Americans in size of 

 family as well as in other re-spects. 



The parents of scientific men from the 

 agricultural classes had families of the 

 average size of 5, those engaged in manu- 

 factures and trade of 4.6 and those in the 

 professions of 4.5, It was shown in the 

 previous section that the agricultural 

 classes contribute in proportion to their 

 numbers only one thirtieth as many sci- 

 entific men as the professional classes, and 

 this disparity is increased by their larger 

 families. Among tlie profes-sions, physi- 

 cians had the smallest families and clerg}'- 

 men the largest, but the differences are 

 not large, the family of the clergyman 

 being smaller than tlie family of the 

 farmer. These figures do not, of course, 

 give information in regard to families of 

 the present generation, in which the differ- 

 ences are probably greater. 



Table A'II. The Sizes op the Families op the 



Scientific Men in accoedance with 



THEIR Nationalities 



In Table VII. are given the figures for 

 the children of the scientific men in ac- 

 cordance with their nationalities. The 



Americans have, on the average, a family 

 of 2.19 children, the Briti.sh of 2.43 and 

 the Germans of 3.21. The German family 

 is thus nearly 50 per cent, larger than the 

 American. The number of foreign fam- 

 ilies is, however, too small to give valid 

 a^e^ages. It would be ver\' desirable to 

 obtain information in regard to the size 

 of family and other vital .statistics for 

 diff'erent nationalities and social cla.sses 

 in our population. A single expert in the 

 Bureau of the Census could collect and 

 collate such data in the cour.se of a couple 

 of years at insignificant expense. 



Table VIII. gives the sizes of the fam- 

 ilies from which the scientific men have 

 come and which they have in accordance 

 with the geographical division in which 

 they were bom and in acordance with 

 whether they were born in the country or 

 in the city. The differences are small. 

 When the parents lived in the country or 

 in small places at the time of birth of the 

 scientific men, they had on the average 

 4.68 children; and when they lived in the 

 towns which in 1900 had a population of 

 25,000 or over, the size of family was 4.43. 

 The scientific men bom in the country 

 had on the average 2.31 children, those 

 born in towns, 2.15. As it will take a 

 long time to correct the common idea that 

 children bom in the countni- are more 

 likely to attain success and di.stinction 

 than those born in cities, attention may 

 again be called to the fact that about one 

 fourth of these leading scientific men were 

 born in cities having in 1860 about one 



Table VIII. The Sizes op the Families from which the Scientific Men come (their Fraterni- 

 ties) and which they have (their Children), in accordance with the Region op 

 their Birth and whether Born in the City or in the Country 



