THE ALLEGHENY COLLEGE BIRTH RATE 



H. R. Hunt 



Uuiz'crsify of Ulississippi 



THE present study was under- 

 taken to determine whether the 

 modern tendency among edu- 

 cated people to restrict the size of 

 the family has reduced the birth rate 

 among- the graduates of Allegheny 

 College. It also adds one more link 

 to the chain of evidence showing that 

 a high state of civilization curbs repro- 

 duction among the more intelligent ele- 

 ments of society. 



Allegheny College was founded in 

 LS15 at Aleadville, Pennsylvania. The 

 present enrollment is about 560 stu- 

 dents (men and women). The college 

 has been for years under the patronage 

 of the ^Methodist Episcopal Church. 

 As a consequence the moral and relig- 

 ious elements in the education of the 

 students have been emphasized. The 

 institution is a good representative of 

 the strong, coeducational, Christian col- 

 lege of the middle west. 



The progress, or even maintenance, 

 of civilization depends in part upon 

 the production of a sulificient number 

 of capable and cooperative men and 

 women. There is a difTerence of opin- 

 ion, however, as to the effective means 

 of maintaining an adequate supply of 

 them. Some assume that the human 

 mind at birth is a clean slate upon 

 which environmental factors inscribe 

 the symbols of character and capacity. 

 The view which prevails among eugen- 

 ists, however, is that heredity is fully 

 as potent as environment in framing 

 the course of the individual's physical 

 and mental development. Men are 

 not "created equal." The available evi- 

 dence supporting this view has been 

 repeatedly presented in the pages of 

 the Journal of Heredity. However, 

 the idea that onlv environmental agen- 



cies shape the human mind, and that 

 heredity has little or nothing to do 

 with moulding it, is so prevalent that 

 a brief and incomplete summary of the 

 evidence may help to clarify the read- 

 er's ideas. 



Is Intelligence Inherited? 



In the first place, variation is of 

 such universal occurrence among ani- 

 mals and plants that one may regard 

 it as a fundamental property of living 

 things. A large number of these varia- 

 tions is known to be inherited.^* If 

 variations in human mental capacity 

 were not inherited, the mind of man 

 would present a very conspicuous 

 anomaly in the realm of life. 



Secondly, many physical variations in 

 man are known to be inherited. This 

 fact increases the probability of some 

 mental variations being transmitted, for 

 it shows that man is no exception to 

 the laws of variation. Bell' and Pear- 

 son" (cited from Pearl) have demon- 

 strated that the physical vigor which 

 leads to long life is inherited. Pear- 

 son (cited from Pearl) has demon- 

 strated the inheritance in man of 

 variations in stature, span, length of 

 forearm, eye color, cephalic index, and 

 hair color. Huntington's chorea, color 

 blindness, night blindness, exosteoses, 

 Polydactyly, skin color, defects in den- 

 tation, ichthyosis, haemophilia, and 

 numerous other physical variations 

 from the normal are known to be in- 

 lierited in man.' It is highly pro1)able, 

 in the face of such evidence, that the 

 human brain varies like other organs 

 of the human body, and that some of 

 these variations are inherited. Such 

 variations would express themselves as 



*For numbered references, see Literature Cited at end of article. 



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