578 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXIX. No. 745 



Who in America" to answer this question. 

 This book has already been successfully used 

 in several sociological studies, and has great 

 value as a starting point for such researches. 

 The editor doubtless tries to be as impartial 

 and comprehensive as possible; but its great- 

 est value to one who wishes to answer a ques- 

 tion similar to the present discussion, is that 

 here he finds a list of names prepared by some 

 one else, without any idea or bias in relation 

 to the investigator's present problem. Thus 

 the first, and one of the most important re- 

 quirements is obtained, the subjective element 

 is eliminated. 



Some will not be willing to accept conclu- 

 sions draw from a list which like this doubt- 

 less has certain flagrant omissions, and where 

 he sees names that he considers should not 

 have been included. If he will stop for a 

 moment and think, he will see that the very 

 objection he raises only argues in the other 

 direction from what he supposes. If, for in- 

 stance, I find a marked correlation between 

 city birth and more or less notable subsequent 

 achievement, drawn from an imperfect list, 

 the correlation would be even higher were the 

 list of names ideally perfect. 



In " Who's Who in America " the birth- 

 places are given in nearly every instance, al- 

 though they seldom enable one to differentiate 

 between farm or village. This difficulty can, 

 however, be overcome by making the question 

 one of urban as against non-urban nativity. 



The leaders of to-day are about fifty years 

 old on the average, so we must go back a half 

 century and picture American population as 

 it was then distributed. According to the 

 census of 1860, there were 5,072,256 persons 

 living in cities of over 8,000 inhabitants, out 

 of a total population of 31,443,321, or 16.1 

 per cent. This standard of 8,000 or more is 

 the one arbitrarily taken by the census bureau 

 as constituting a city, and is so used to illus- 

 trate the growth of urban populations. There 

 were ninety-six such cities, and a list of them 

 is given in the " Annual Cyclopedia " for 

 1861. It is easy then to see if these cities 

 have done better or worse than might be ex- 

 pected in producing leading men. Under 

 initial A in " Who's Who in America," we 



find 128 born in cities out of 433, or 29.6 per 

 cent, as against the 16.1 per cent, expected. 



Under initial B, we find 404 out of 1,4Y7, 

 or 27.5 per cent. 



Under initial C, we find 362 out of 1,143, 

 or 31.7 per cent. 



Under initial D, we find 213 out of 676, or 

 31.6 per cent. 



Under initial E, we find 97 out of 273, or 

 35.6 per cent. 



For the salce of being on the safe side I 

 have added all the unrecorded birthplaces to 

 the suburban and rural, and yet the latter fail 

 to produce their projwr quota in every single 

 group, and in fact every little group of fifty 

 or a hundred taken at random alphabetically 

 will show the same result. 



It seems unnecessary to carry investigation 

 further to establish the fact that the urban 

 beats the non-urban by nearly two to one. 

 The towns, villages and farms should have 

 produced more than five times' as many lead- 

 ers as the cities. They have failed to produce 

 more than about twice as many. Thus the 

 entire non-urban which should have given rise 

 to about 85 per cent, of the total has only 

 produced about 70 per cent. As a great many 

 persons are recorded as born in towns or vil- 

 lages, it is evident that the number from 

 actual farms must be considerably under Mr. 

 Spilknan's 70 per cent., at least as far as the 

 evidence drawn from this book is concerned. 

 The inference is that since the cities beat the 

 non-urban districts as a whole, the towns and 

 villages would make a proportionately better 

 showing than the farms, were the necessary 

 data given. 



Now, as to its bearing on the question of 

 heredity. It is an easily verified fact that 

 talent tends to be drawn by, and to locate 

 itself in the great centers of human activity. 

 If we turn to the geographical index in the 

 back part of our same biographical reference 

 volume, we find that the great cities, ISTew 

 York, Chicago, Boston, etc., show two or three 

 times as many names as would be expected 

 merely from their populations. I think no 

 one will question the fact that there has been 

 a migration and selection of the most able 

 men, especially the ambitious and gifted young 



