488 READINGS IN EVOLUTION, GENETICS, AND EUGENICS 



total number of children represented, 2,259, the child mortality rate 

 for this population is found to be 5.27 per cent or 53 per 1,000. 



The smallness of this figure may be seen by comparison with the 

 statistics of the registration area, U.S. Census of 1880, when the child 

 mortality (0-4 years) was 400 per thousand, as calculated by Alexan- 

 der Graham Bell. A mortality of 53 for the first four years of life is 

 smaller than any district known in the United States, even to-day, can 

 show for the first year of life alone. If any city could bring the deaths 

 of babies during their first twelve months down to 53 per 1,000, it 

 would think it had achieved the impossible; but here is a population 



CHILD MORTALITY IN FAMILIES OF LONG-LIVED STOCK, 

 GENEALOGICAL RECORD OFFICE DATA 



340 91 119 



in which 53 per 1,000 covers the deaths, not only of the fatal first 12 

 months, but of the following three years in addition. 



Now this population with an unprecedentedly low rate of child 

 mortality is not one which had had the benefit of any Baby Saving 

 Campaign, nor even the knowledge of modern science. Its mothers 

 were mostly poor, many of them ignorant; they lived frequently 

 under conditions of hardship ; they were peasants and pioneers. Their 

 babies grew up without doctors, without pasteurized milk, without ice, 

 without many sanitary precautions, usually on rough food. But they 

 had one advantage which no amount of applied science can give after 

 birth — namely, good heredity. They had inherited exceptionally 

 good constitutions. 



