334 | ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1946 
STUDIES UNDER THE AUSPICES OF OTHER INSTITUTIONS 
Students.—Outside the Government, the main anthropometric 
studies on the American people have come from colleges and universi- 
ties. In general these studies have been based upon the entrance 
physical examinations of students. The reports are very numerous, 
but only a few have received thorough analyses.11 However, all have 
served to call attention to the secular changes taking place in this 
element of the American population. By comparing year by year 
the dimensions of students of the same age, it has been discovered that 
size is increasing. Studies made in New England colleges by Bowles 
and involving father-son and mother-daughter combinations show 
the changes illustrated in figure 12. It is now known that this is a 
part of a world-wide phenomenon and it has been suggested that it is 
due to nutritional changes or perhaps may be evolutionary in nature.” 
We have seen already that Boas detected such changes in immigrants. 
Obviously, this secular change, regardless of its explanation, serves to 
confuse the picture as to the developing American type. 
Criminals.—In addition to the work on students, a broader attack 
on the problem of the developing American type has been undertaken 
at Harvard by Hooton and his students in the Department of Anthro- 
pology. Their approach has been through criminals and such civilian 
groups as could be measured in Boston and at A Century of Progress 
Exposition held in Chicago in 1933-1934. <A total of about 17,000 
persons were examined. Commenting on their composition, Hooton 
says: 
Our series represent fairly large samples from three markedly diverse levels 
of our population. The criminals are socially, economically, and biologically 
the most debased element. The Boston civilian check sample is composed, for 
the most part, of urban residents representing a respectable working-class popu- 
lation, which has enjoyed, presumably, few of the advantages conferred by 
wealth and by social position. The Century of Progress series proves to be a 
group of persons disproportionately selected from the highly educated, and, on 
the whole, economically and socially superior classes. Undoubtedly this selection 
arose from the situation of the Harvard Anthropometric Laboratory in the Hall 
of Social Sciences. Probably few persons visited this hall intentionally unless 
they happened to be interested in education and in social problems. It required 
a certain intellectual curiosity and a certain pertinacity for these persons to 
book and to fulfill engagements for anthropometric examinations. If the labora- 
tory had been operated in the part of the Exposition known as “The Streets of 
Paris,” the character of the sample studied might have been somewhat different. 
[1936, pp. 25-26.] 
The method of analysis used by Hooton was that of sorting out 
arbitrary combinations of racial criteria and assigning to them names 
11 See especially the publications by Bowles (1932: Harvard), H. N. Gould (1930-1939: 
Newcomb), Jackson (1927 and 1929: Minnesota), and Steggerda et al. (1929: Smith). 
72 See articles by Andrews (1943) and Stewart (1943). 
