564 



EVOLUTION, GENETICS, AND EUGENICS 



relatives, it can hardly be regarded as anything but the effect of 

 heredity — of the inheritance of a certain type of constitution. 



Dr.Ploetz studied the deaths of 3,210 children in European royalty, 

 from this viewpoint. The following table shows the relation between 

 father and child: 



LENGTH OF LIFE OF FATHERS AND CHILD MORTALITY OF 

 THEIR CHILDREN IN ROYAL AND PRINCELY 

 FAMILIES (PLOETZ DATA) 



Allowing for the smallness of some of the groups, it is evident that the 

 amount of correlation is about the same here as among the English 

 Quakers of the Beeton-Pearson investigation, whose mortality was 

 shown in the two preceding tables. In the healthiest group from the 

 royal families — the cases in which the father lived to old age — the 

 amount of child mortality is about the same as that of the Hyde family 

 in America, which Alexander Graham Bell has studied — namely, 

 somewhere around 250 per 1,000. One may infer that the royal 

 families are rather below par in soundness of constitution. 



All these studies agree perfectly in showing that the amount of 

 child mortality is determined primarily by the physical constitution 

 of the parents, as measured by their longevity. In the light of these 

 facts, the nature of the extraordinarily low child mortality shown in 

 the 340 families from the Genealogical Record Office, with which we 

 began the study of this point, can hardly be misunderstood. These 

 famiHes have the best inherited constitution possible and the other 

 studies cited would make us certain of finding a low child mortality 

 among them, even if we had not directly investigated the facts. 



If the interpretation which we have given is correct, the conclusion 

 is inevitable that child mortality is primarily a problem of eugenics, 

 and that all other factors are secondary. There is found to be no 

 warrant for the statement so often repeated in one form or another, 

 that " the fundamental cause of the excessive rate of infant mortality 

 in industrial communities is poverty, inadequate incomes, and low 

 standards of living." Royalty and its princely relatives are not 



