298 GENETICS AND EUGENICS 



the war the presidents have come from other sections, and 

 seem not to have been inferior in ability to their predecessors. 

 In some quarters it is the fashion to point to New England 

 as the source of the really superior American stock, viz., its 

 intellectuals, but there is no better ground for thinking the 

 Puritan stock superior than for thinking the Cavalier stock 

 superior. Circumstance has had much to do with the ad- 

 vancement of each in influence. In this connection it is 

 interesting to note the conclusions reached by Professor 

 Cattell {Popular Science Monthly, May, 1915) from a study of 

 the families of America's one thousand leading scientists. He 

 says : 



"If men of performance could only come from superior fam- 

 ily lines, this would be a conclusive argument for a privileged 

 class and for a hereditary aristocracy. If the congenital 

 equipment of an individual should prescribe completely what 

 he will accomplish in life, equality of opportunity, education 

 and social reform would be of no significance. Such an ex- 

 treme position, though it is approached by men with so much 

 authority as Sir Francis Galton, Professor Karl Pearson, Dr. 

 F. A. Woods, Dr. C. B. Davenport and Professor E. L. 

 Thorndike, is untenable. Equally extreme in the opposite 

 direction is M. Odin's aphorism " Genius is in things not in 

 men," or the not uncommon opinion that almost anything 

 can be done with a child by training and education. 



My data show that a boy born in Massachusetts or Con- 

 necticut has been fifty times as likely to become a scientific 

 man as a boy born along the southeastern seaboard from 

 Georgia to Louisiana. They further show that a boy is fifty 

 times as likely to do scientific work as a girl. No negro in 

 this country has hitherto accomplished scientific work of 

 consequence. A boy from the professional classes in New 

 England has a million chances to become a scientific leader 

 as compared with one chance for a negro girl from the 

 cotton fields. 



" These great differences may properly be attributed in part 

 tO natural capacity and in part to opportunity. If the 174 



