Geography of Man in Relation to Eugenics 299 



Now all of these migrations have a profound eugenic 

 significance. The most active, ambitious, and courageous 

 blood migrates. It migrated to America and has made her 

 what she has become; in America another selection took 

 place in the western migrations, and what this best blood 

 — this crime de la creme — did in the West all the world 

 knows. Great cities like Chicago, mth its motto "I will," 

 arose in a generation or two to the front rank of world 

 metropolises, and New England, the early home of the 

 sewing machine and the cotton gin, has yielded the palm 

 to the Central West, the home of the reaping machine and 

 the aeroplane. 



And when the best and strongest migrated the weaker 

 minds were left behind to breed in the old homestead. A 

 recent report of the British "Committee on Physical 

 Deterioration" contains the testimony of Dr. C. R. Browne 

 about conditions in the west of Ireland. He says: "The 

 sound and the healthy — the young men and young women 

 from the rural districts emigrate to America in tremendous 

 numbers, and it is only the more enterprising and the more 

 active that go, as a rule." And Dr. Kelly, the Roman 

 Catholic bishop of Ross testified : " For a considerable number 

 of years it has been only the strong and vigorous that go — 

 the old people and the weaklings remain behind in Ireland." 

 And even in New England we see signs of decadence of the 

 old stock and men speak of racial deterioration. But the 

 race as a whole has not deteriorated but only the New 

 England representatives — the left-behinds of the grand old 

 families, whose stronger members went west. 



Likewise in the rural and semi-rural population within 

 a hundred miles of our great cities, we find a disproportion 

 of the indolent, the alcoholic, the feeble-minded, the ne'er- 



