178 WILHELMINE E. KEY 



That this study has for us more than a mere academic interest appears 

 from the following considerations: Whatever the present crises, social and 

 economic, may compass by bringing latent potentialities to the fore, through 

 stress of untoward conditions, we may not look to them to change materially 

 the basic fabric of our society. That was fixed long ago in the germinal con- 

 stitution of the peoples that were drawn to our shores. How the traits aris- 

 ing from that constitution may be eliminated, conserved, combined and re- 

 combined must be the task of the social policies of the future. 



From this point onward, our inquiry takes two principal directions. First, 

 into the human ground substance from which proceeded our distinctive de- 

 velopment, — industrially, socially, politically. Second, the nature and 

 origin of those regnant personalities which led in this development. We 

 deal here with the essence of the process of Americanization. This essence 

 lies in the ever greater approximation on the part of our constituent peoples 

 to the standards and ideals conceived by our leaders. Its success depends 

 not only on the compelling power of those leaders, but also on the native 

 bent of the lesser families, attracted hither by all that the name America 

 for good or ill, has come to stand for, who have with more or less success 

 worked out the pattern set for them by those leaders. 



It was not then just any collection of humans who embarked here on the 

 conquest of a continent, penetrated it first by painful hazard, then banded 

 it with lines of steel and with all those means of easy communication we now 

 enjoy; nor is it conceivable that our social and political institutions could 

 have been what they are without such families as the Adamses, the Ran- 

 dolphs, the Edwardses, the Lees, and that without them we should have had 

 such personalities as John and Samuel Adams, George Washington, Thomas 

 Jefferson and John Marshall, with all that their leadership entailed in war 

 and statecraft. 



Selective processes reaching far back in European history were at work to 

 give character to the stocks that came to our shores. In affirming this we do 

 not reduce national progress to any simple formula. Selection in the first 

 place implies variability and variability springs from a wide range of 

 conditions. Some of these factors reside in the crossing of races and strains. 

 Mutations, at present entirely mysterious in origin, also play a r61e, and the 

 isolation furnished by geographical barriers and racial antipathy. We may 

 only attempt to disentangle a few of the most potent elements from the 

 texture of the whole and single out certain fruitful lines of future speculation 

 and investigation. 



There is quite general agreement that crossing, whether of race or strain 

 within the race, widens variability; it also increases mental and physical 



