IN THE MELTING POT 



IT HAS loni;' lieen charged and to 

 a large extent proved that the 

 immigration of recent decades 

 into the United States, coming of 

 late years largely from the Mediter- 

 ranean region and the Near East, is 

 eugenically helow the average of the 

 older immigration, and of the Ameri- 

 can stock of native parentage, both of 

 them largely Nordic in composition. 

 Army mental tests proved this clearly 

 as to general intelligence,' but the fact 

 can be tested in many other ways. 



The House of Representatives Com- 

 mittee on Immigration and Natural- 

 ization has been holding hearings dur- 

 ing the past w^inter. and called on 

 Harry H. Laughlin. superintendent of 

 the Eugenics Record Office, for infor- 

 mation as to the foreign-born in insti- 

 tutions for the defective and delin- 

 quent in the United States. His testi- 

 mony has been issued by this com- 

 mittee, and forms a pamphlet' of 106 

 pages packed full of interesting in- 

 formation. 



Dr. Laughlin's method of attack 

 was to calculate a normal quota for 

 each group of foreign-born in the 

 United States, in a classification which 

 embraced all the principal countries 

 of the world and ran up as high as 

 No. 67. "born at sea." 



Taking a given institution popula- 

 tion. — say the feebleminded. — the per- 

 centage of this population to the total 

 population of the United States was 

 taken as 100. Then if the Italians, 

 for instance, represented (as meas- 

 ured by the 1910 census) 1.46 per cent 

 of the total population of the United 

 States, it v/as calculated that they 

 ought to represent 1.46 per cent of 

 the total population of the feeble- 



minded institutions m the country, if 

 their showing in this respect were 

 "normal." The extent to which any 

 group exceeded or fell short of its 

 cjuota. calculated in this way. was 

 taken as indicating its standing in 

 comparison with the United States 

 population as a whole, and with other 

 groups figured in the same manner. 



The statistical difficulties of inter- 

 pretation of such figures are quite ob- 

 vious, and doubtless no final validity 

 would be claimed for any of them. 

 To follow up the illustration already 

 adopted, it is clear that the extent 

 to which the Italians fell short of or 

 surpassed their quota would be in- 

 fluenced by such important factors as 

 the age and sex of immigrants, the 

 regions in which they settled in the 

 United States, the tendency of race 

 or religion to take care of its own 

 dependents, and the like. While such 

 questions make all comparison pro- 

 visional. Dr. Laughlin is undoubtedly 

 justified in claiming that where a 

 group's "quota fulfilment" exceeds 200 

 per cent, in connection with a small 

 probable error (which he calculated in 

 all cases), that group deserves further 

 examination from the point of view 

 indicated. 



The Italians — to conclude with the 

 illustration chosen, were entitled to 

 247 inmates of feebleminded institu- 

 tions, but only 64 were found. In this 

 respect, then, they fulfilled their quota 

 to the extent of only 25.4 per cent. 

 As compared with the population at 

 large, it appears that the Italian im- 

 migrants either have a small per cent 

 of feebleminded, or else their feeble- 

 minded for some reason do not get 

 into America's public custodial institu- 



' See Popenoe, Paul. Intelligence and Race : A review of some of the results of the 

 army intelligence tests. I, the foreign born. Journal of Heredity, Vol. XIII, No. 6, pp. 

 265-9, Washington, D. C, June, 1922. 



- "Analysis of America's Modern Melting Pot." Hearings before the committee on im- 

 migration and naturalization. House of Representatives, 67th Congerss, 3rd session, Novem- 

 ber 21, 1922, Serial T-C. Statement of Harry H. Laughlin, Washington, Government Print- 

 ing Office, 1923. 



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