98 HEREDITY AND SOCIAL FITNESS 



A similar condition obtains with reference to assimilation. In the 

 progressive lines it has consisted in the ready adoption of the ideals 

 and standards of living of the better lines into which they have mar- 

 ried. In the defective lines there has been a similar adherence to the 

 lower ideals and standards of the degenerate native strains, and a 

 decline in these standards in subsequent generations. 



We frequently hear the statement that pauperism among immi- 

 grants disappears in the second generation. In our history pauperism 

 does not appear at all until the second or third generation and only in 

 certain lines. It then increases in ensuing generations. It appears 

 to have its source, not in the strange, adverse conditions with which 

 the immigrant naturally finds it difficult to cope, but in a native 

 inability to take advantage of even favorable conditions. This inabil- 

 ity, as we have already seen, is traceable to the mating of defective 

 with defective. Our study accordingly lends support to a view which 

 will no doubt prove to be very generally true as eugenic surveys are 

 extended. According to this view, low economic worth ii? largely a 

 matter of inherent mental defect, while mental defectiveness is not 

 so much a question of race as it is a question of defective strains 

 within that race. Every race has its good and its bad strains. Some 

 no doubt have more of one kind than of another, but any selection of 

 immigrants as the progenitors of the future American race, in order to 

 be effective, should be based on the salient traits of the strains rather 

 than the race to which the individual immigrant belongs. 



If, now, we inquire how far the initial defects found here might have 

 been detected by any of the tests proposed for the sifting of the fit 

 from the unfit, we secure evidence of the inadequacy of these tests in 

 determining the potentialities of the persons concerned. The earlier 

 generations of the Riel and Rode families were noted for their great 

 stature and fine physique, this advantage being accompanied by dull- 

 ness and mental backwardness, which, however, in no case appears 

 to have amounted to obvious mental defect. At worst they seem to 

 have belonged to a high grade of feeble-mindedness, which is so 

 difficult of detection and hence rarely deported, but which by its 

 marriage into inferior native strains founded lines noticeable for 

 marked defect. 



In the case of Aaron and Mary Rufer, both were short and stocky 

 and very strong. Current mental tests would assuredly have brought 

 to light the wife's defect of number and proportion, but here expulsion 

 would have meant that of her husband, who represented the aggres- 

 siveness, perseverance, and superior mentality of a strain which went 

 far to counteract the weakness of the wife's strain. The whole ques- 

 tion is exceedingly complex. 



