CONSANGXnNEOUS MARRIAGES 259 



would depend upon the stock into which people are prone to 

 marry, but on this we are given no data. 



It is quite unwarrantable to draw the conclusion that "pure 

 bred and prepotent are practically synonymous," or that the 

 American who is an "extremely amalgamated group in conse- 

 quence of amalgamation is a decidedly impotent group." The 

 American birth rate is low for the reasons that have led to the 

 reduced birth rate in France and elsewhere. The decline of the 

 birth rate in Europe has been quite as rapid in countries whose 

 population is relatively homogeneous as in countries where there 

 has been a great mixture of peoples. 



Jenks has studied the amount of in-marrying and out-marrying 

 in eight chief ethnic groups in Minneapolis and finds that their 

 order arranged according to increasing percentage of out-mar- 

 riages is as follows: Swedes, Norwegians, Germans, Danes, 

 Irish, English, Welsh, Scotch. "This series of ethnic groups, 

 arranged in order of decreasing amalgamation and increasing co- 

 hesion from the Scotch to the Swedes is the exact duplicate of the 

 series of the same Minneapolis ethnic groups in order of increas- 

 ing fecundity, except for the Irish and Scotch as seen in Table A. 

 It seems that the most fecund ethnic groups are those least given 

 to amalgamation, and vice versa." It may be noted, however, 

 upon inspecting the table, that as a rule, where there is a relatively 

 high fecundity of in-marriages there is also a relatively high 

 fecundity of out-marriages. As a comparison of the relative 

 number of native and foreign born among the various ethnic 

 groups shows, those groups composed mainly of foreign born 

 members have the highest birth rate and (very naturally) the 

 highest percentage of in-marriages. These are the groups which 

 must be composed of relatively recent immigrants who would 

 retain their traditional fecundity. Where, as in the Swedes and 

 Norwegians the foreign bom outnumber the native born members 

 of their stock over two to one, we should naturally expect the 

 birth rate to be high. With the next group, the Germans, the 

 foreign born are only a little less in number than the native born 

 (5,988 to 4,111). With the Irish, English, Welsh and Scotch the 



