EUGENICS AND EUTHENICS 491 
relatives, it can hardly be regarded as anything but the effect of 
heredity—of the inheritance of a certain type of constitution. 
Dr. Ploetz studied the deaths of 3,210 children in European royalty, 
from this viewpoint. The following table shows the relation between 
father and child: 
LENGTH OF LIFE OF FATHERS AND CHILD MORTALITY OF 
THEIR CHILDREN IN ROYAL AND PRINCELY 
FAMILIES (PLOETZ DATA) 
Year oF Lire in Watch FaTuers Diep Ar 
ALL 
16-25|26-35| 36-45|46-s5|s6-6s|66-7s|76-85|86 up|*CFS 
Number of children.............. 23| 90] 367| 545] 725| 983] 444] 331320 
Number who died in first five years.| 12] 29] 115} 171| 200] 254] 105} 1) 887 
Per cent who died............ 52.2| 32.2| 31.3] 31.4} 27.6] 25.8] 23.6] 3.0] 27.6 
Allowing for the smallness of some of the groups, it is evident that the 
amount of correlation is about the same here as among the English 
Quakers of the Beeton-Pearson investigation, whose mortality was 
shown in the two preceding tables. In the healthiest group from the 
royal families—the cases in which the father lived to old age—the 
amount of child mortality is about the same as that of the Hyde family 
in America, which Alexander Graham Bell has studied—namely, 
somewhere around 250 per 1,000. One may infer that the royal 
families are rather below par in soundness of constitution. 
All these studies agree perfectly in showing that the amount of 
child mortality is determined primarily by the physical constitution 
of the parents, as measured by their longevity. In the light of these 
facts, the nature of the extraordinarily low child mortality shown in 
the 340 families from the Genealogical Record Office, with which we 
began the study of this point, can hardly be misunderstood. These 
families have the best inherited constitution possible and the other 
studies cited would make us certain of finding a low child mortality 
among them, even if we had not directly investigated the facts. 
If the interpretation which we have given is correct, the conclusion 
is inevitable that child mortality is primarily a problem of eugenics, 
and that all other factors are secondary. There is found to be no 
warrant for the statement so often repeated in one form or another, 
that “the fundamental cause of the excessive rate of infant mortality 
in industrial communities is poverty, inadequate incomes, and low 
standards of living.” Royalty and its princely relatives are not 
