300 Heredity and Eugenics 



do-well. Thus our great cities lure to themselves the best 

 of the rural protoplasm and surround it with conditions that 

 discourage reproduction, either by creating a disinclination 

 to marriage or making it inconvenient and expensive to have 

 children. So our great cities act anti-eugenically, sterilizing 

 the best and leaving the worst to reproduce their like. 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE SINGLE GERM PLASM ON THE RACE 



As one stands at Ellis Island and sees pass the stream 

 of persons, sometimes five thousand in a day, who go 

 through that portal to enter the United States and, for the 

 most part, to become incorporated into it, one is apt to 

 lose sight of the potential importance to this nation of the 

 individual, or, more strictly, the germ plasm that he or 

 she carries. Yet the study of extensive pedigrees warns 

 us of the fact. Every one of those peasants will, if fecund, 

 play a role for better or worse in the future history of this 

 nation. Formerly, when we believed that traits blend, 

 a characteristic in the germ plasm of a single individual 

 among thousands seemed not worth considering — it would 

 soon be lost in the melting-pot. But now we know that 

 unit-characters do not blend; that after a score of gener- 

 ations the given characteristic may still appear unaffected 

 by the repeated union with foreign germ plasm. So the 

 individual, as the bearer of a potentially immortal germ 

 plasm with immutable traits, becomes of the greatest 

 interest. A few examples will illustrate this law and its 

 practical importance. 



Elizabeth Tuttle. — From two English parents, sire at 

 least remotely descended from royalty, was born Elizabeth 

 Tuttle. She developed into a woman of great beauty, of 

 tall and commanding appearance, striking carriage, "of 



