210 HEREDITY IN RELATION TO EUGENICS 



America and settled at New Paltz on the Hudson about 

 1710. Schismatic dissensions having broken out in the new 

 colony, Heydt, with others, left and settled about 1717 in 

 Philadelphia County not far from Germantown where he 

 acquired several hundred acres of land, established a colony, 

 built mills and entered upon various commercial enterprises. 

 In 1731, having acquired a grant of 40,000 acres of land in the 

 Shenandoah Valley, he migrated thither, became known as 

 Baron Hite, and died there in 1760. One of his friends, 

 Van Metre, who originally settled at New Paltz, had moved 

 first to Somerset Co., New Jersey, then to Salem County in 

 the same colony, later to Prince George's County, Maryland, 

 and, finally, to Orange County, Virginia (Smyth, 1909). 

 These are examples, merely, of the restlessness, — of the en- 

 terprising restlessness — of the early settlers. 



This trait of restlessness and ambitious search for better 

 conditions shows itself in the frequent migrations of the de- 

 scendants of the early settlers. The abandoned farms of 

 New England point to the trait in our blood that entices us 

 to move on to reap a possible advantage elsewhere. "I don't 

 know a farmer in Illinois," said a friend that has traveled 

 over the state extensively, "who wouldn't sell his farm to- 

 morrow and go to a distant state if he could be sure of bet- 

 tering himself financially by doing so." This restlessness 

 affects whole states. Thus from 1900 to 1910 the population 

 of Iowa decreased because so many thousands of her people 

 moved to the newly opened lands of Canada, Washington 

 and Oklahoma. There was an ambitious tendency in the 

 germ plasm out of which the forefathers developed that 

 lured them from Europe and it is in the same germ plasm 

 yet and shows itself in these later generations. 



A shorter but not less pregnant migration is that to the 

 metropolis from the surrounding rural districts. One after 

 another, as they grow up, many or most of the young men 



