344 



THE TREND OF THE RACE 



Fitness of City and Country Recruits 



The most recent investigations of Burgdorfer have yielded 

 results equally unfavorable to the city recruits.^ 



Many of the causes of reduced urban vitality are obvious, such 

 as relatively poor air, especially in the congested areas. The 

 water supply, formerly so frequent a cause of epidemics, has been 

 improved in so many large cities that it is very commonly supe- 

 rior to that of the country. The milk supply, notwithstanding 

 much improvement in recent years, is still sufficiently bad to be 

 a potent factor in urban infant mortality. The greater readi- 

 ness with which epidemics are carried in crowded areas is doubt- 

 less one of the chief causes of high urban mortality. Without 

 dwelling upon statistics of the urban and rural death rates from 

 different diseases, it may be stated that, on the average, the 

 death rate from tuberculosis, measles, diphtheria, whooping 

 cough, scarlet fever, enteritis, and especially pneumonia is much 

 more heavy in cities than in the country. 



Cities have proven to be consumers of men; they are vortices 

 into which are drawn ever larger proportions of our race. It 

 becomes therefore a matter of the greatest importance to ascer- 

 tain upon what hereditary classes cities exercise their most 

 destructive effect. The question involves a consideration of two 

 problems, (i) the effect of urban life on the death rate and birth 

 rate of different hereditary stocks, and (2) the hereditary char- 

 acteristics of migrants to the cities as compared with those of the 

 population in general. Granting that cities are potent consumers 

 of humanity, do they destroy the superior hereditary types more 

 ' Ann. deutschen Reichs, 1909, 888-909; 1910, 873-878. 



