BETTER AMERICAN FAMILIES II 



The Story of a Family Belonging to the So-Called Middle Class Which in the 



Course of Generations Has Broken Up into Lines Differing 



Widely in Social Worth. 



WiLHELMINE E. KeY 



Eugenics Record Office, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Cold Spring Harbor, 



Long Island, N. Y. 



A 



LL that we win is a battle — lost 

 in advance — with the irreversi- 

 ble phenomena in the back- 

 ground of nature." So exclaims 

 one school of thinkers over the spectacle 

 of dead and decadent civilizations, while 

 the more hopeful view is voiced in some 

 such phrase as follows : "First and 

 foremost in the perpetuity of national 

 life is the element of belief — an undying 

 faith in human nature." In a previous 

 paper we have already disclaimed any 

 need for such general and impersonal 

 laws of national development, finding 

 the real motive power to lie in the in- 

 teraction of certain personalities with 

 new combinations of environal charac- 

 ters. These characters, which con- 

 stituted the resources of the country, to- 

 getlier with the new demands on the^ 

 individual such as adverse climatic con- 

 ditions, vast distances to be traversed, 

 savage enemies, human and otherwise, 

 have acted to bring to the fore and per- 

 petuate through physical and social se- 

 lection the trait-complexes best fitted to 

 cope with these conditions. The process 

 of Americanization was found to consist 

 primarily in the establishment of stand- 

 ards by certain regnant personalities, 

 and the more or less perfect approxi- 

 mation to these standards through edu- 

 cation on the part of the people. 



It is proposed in this paper to ex- 

 amine, more minutely than is usually 

 done, this process of approximation as 

 exemplified in the story of two immi- 

 grant families of something more than 

 a century ago. Fortunately the sector 

 of liuman development known as Amer- 

 80 



ican history is narrow enough to per- 

 mit a view in relation to the individuals 

 which determined the dominating qual- 

 ity of its several epochs. We have not 

 yet outgrown the pioneering period of 

 our history ; it only assumes new phases 

 from decade to decade, not the least 

 significant of its manifestations being 

 the behavior of "young America" in 

 the war just ended. However, for this 

 study we will take the story of two 

 families through five and six genera- 

 tions from their earliest planting on 

 American soil. We shall try to trace the 

 changes in social worth from generation 

 to generation, both in relation to the 

 economic and social opportunity en- 

 joyed, but also in relation to the type 

 of marriage its various members were 

 able to make. We shall try to express 

 their worth in terms of their leading 

 traits and view their value as social 

 assets as reaction between these traits 

 and the environment. The study com- 

 prises nearly two thousand individuals, 

 about one-half of whom are in the direct 

 line of descent from two pairs of 

 pioneers, the remainder being members 

 of the families into which the direct 

 descendants married. 



It is estimating character and ability 

 in the individual, chief reliance was 

 placed on the "social test ;" and by this 

 was meant sufficient physical and men- 

 tal soundness to understand the nature 

 and possibilities of his surroundings, to 

 react to them, to conceive social stand- 

 ards and bring his life in conformity to 

 such standards. While the application 

 of standard tests in a studv of this sort 



