344 THE TREND OF THE RACE 
Fitness of City and Country Recruits 
City Recruits Country Recruits 
Acceptable|Unacceptable| Acceptable| Unacceptable 
Teachers x. Sacer nce ewes 49.4 50.6 59.7 40.3 
Shoemakers and allied trades.....] 46.6 59-4 50.2 49.8 
Smith and metal workers........ 66.4 33.6 71.1 28.9 
LabOrersiics acid ycctun are scone ts 60.9 39.2 66,2 33.8 
The most recent investigations of Burgdérfer 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, (1) 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 
1 Ann. deutschen Reichs, 1909, 888-909; 1910, 873-878. 
