Ethnic Amalgamation 



By Albert Ernest Jenks 



;ODAY it is common observational knowledge that the 

 so-called "hybrid races" of man are not infertile, as Broca 

 and others believed. There are no true human hybrid 

 groups similar in sterility to the hybrid mule. There are 

 those who believe that amalgamation, or hybridization, 

 is the chief source of increased fertility in groups of people. What 

 are the facts in the case? We may make some attempt at this time 

 at a scientific answer to the following questions: 



What effect, if any, has amalgamation on the fertility or fecun- 

 dity of the various human groups amalgamating? If amalgamation 

 has any consistent effect on fecundity, at what stage in the process 

 may it be seen? Does it show least or most in those families begin- 

 ning the process of amalgamation, or in those families most completely 

 amalgamated, or in those somewhere in the intermediate stages of 

 amalgamation? 



The data used in this study consist of certain results of ethnic 

 censuses of 40,000 families in Minneapolis, Minnesota; 480 families 

 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and 95 families in Lake Benton town- 

 ship, Lincoln county, Minnesota. In 1909 I began to gather data for 

 an ethnic map of Minneapolis, then a city of 300,000 population. 

 Advanced students recorded on blanks the ethnic composition of the 

 40,000 families studied. We learned whether both husband and wife 

 are so-called pure-bred members of the same ethnic group, as, for 

 instance, Irish, or whether one is, for instance, Norwegian and the 

 other German, or whether the amalgamation process has gone so far 

 that the person does not know his ethnic composition, and as a result 

 calls himself an 'American". The blanks also show whether husband 

 and wife are foreign-born, or are native American-born, and, if the 

 latter, what generation of American birth the person is. The number 

 of unmarried children in the family was also shown. Three years were 

 given to the survey. In the summer of 1915 Mr Stanley P. Jones, 

 an advanced student, gathered facts in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, a 

 city of about 20,000 population. During the school year of 1914-15 

 Miss Ethel Hanke, a former student who had assisted in the Minne- 

 apolis census, gathered data in Lake Benton, a township of about 

 800 population in southwestern Minnesota. In both Sioux Falls and 



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