Summary of Remarks by Ellsworth Huntington in
discussion of Dr. Perkins' paper on the Eugenics Survey of Vermont

Genius consists of three things. The first is a new and valuable idea. The second is sound judgment as to when and where to put the idea into effect. The third is the energy, determination and skill with which to carry the idea to fruition. Judged by these criteria the Eugenics Survey of Vermont displays real genius. Its success depends partly on the fact that it distributes its efforts in fairly equal proportion along three lines. One of these is basic studies of inheritance such as the tracing of good or bad lines within families of the opposite type. Such biological investigations, however, do not make a complete eugenics survey. They need to be supplemented by equally exact and careful studies of social phenomena. The Eugenics Survey of Vermont has done this in such cases as its analysis of the education and occupations of the migrants who come and go in its villages. A further element in a full survey evolves the physical environment. The eugenics status of Vermont can never be rightly understood without a full appreciation of the part played by the central mountains in producing isolation and by the lowlands and valleys in fostering agriculture, manufacturing and the growth of towns.

In studying the reports of the Eugenics Survey of Vermont I have been asking myself what more is needed. One step which seems highly important is to broaden our studies of the survival rate and give them three or four dimensions instead of two. We are constantly confronted by the fact that the birth rate and survival rate are highest among the least intellectual of our population. We see that miners, laborers, and farmers have

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far larger families than carpenters, clerks and small business men, and
these in turn have larger families than do engineers, physicians, and art-
ists. We tacitly assume that this represents the order of value - the labor-
ers at the bottom, the professional people at the top. But when we look at
the matter more deeply our opinion may be modified and the outlook may be
more hopeful.

In the first place can we measure the real value of different types
of people as Professor Fairchild has suggested? I believe that while we
cannot do it accurately and cannot yet separate most qualities according
to their genes, we can make a rough but effective classification of values
which has a real eugenic value. Mr. L. T. Whitney and I have tried it in
The Builders of America, and we believe it is practical. For our present
purpose we agree with Dr. Davenport in saying that the ultimate aim of
eugenics is to produce people who are useful members of society. It is
easy to quibble about definitions, but we all recognize that certain kinds
of people are highly valuable to society, while others are harmful. The
most valuable people excel in three respects. First, they are sound in
body and thus capable of working well. Second, they have good intellects
capable of guiding them in the daily round of life. And third, they have
good temperaments. Our friend from Canada neglected this last point in
her description of the unintellectual woman who is a fine cook and very
reliable caretaker of children. That woman may not be highly intellectual,
but she has a brain good enough to guide her intelligently in her daily
work. She also has a good physique apparently so that she is able to ac-
complish a good deal. And above all, she has a superb temperament - the
kind that makes her faithful, dependable, eager to work and reasonable with

the children. Such a person may not rank high on the purely intellectual side, but she ranks well up on a eugenic scale based on physique and temperament as well as intellect. In other words she is/distinctly valuable member of society.

Applying this side to concrete problems, what do we find? One of the first things that we see is that the survival rate does not decline steadily from the lowest types to the highest. Tramps, prostitutes, idlers, thugs and the like appear to stand at the very bottom so far as social value is concerned. As a group these people are by no means reproducing themselves. Disease and a wandering or irregular life, greatly reduce their birth rate, while similar conditions raise the level of infant mortality very high. Thus at the lower end of the social side the survival rate drops suddenly to a level far below that of the ordinary miner or laborer. This in itself is a blessing which we do not always realize.

The other end of the side is illustrated by an investigation made by Mr. Whitney and myself for Yale and by Dr. Philipps for Harvard. Choosing three classes which had been out of college thirty or thirty-five years, we rated each member according to his social value as a useful member of society. We did this by setting up five categories - very high, high, average, low, and very low. Then we got five or six leading men in each class to distribute their classmates in the five categories on the basis of the achievements of thirty years. When the average ratings thus obtained were compared with family records a very clear and encouraging tendency at once became apparent. The tenth who were rated highest in usefulness tended to marry young, practically all of them were married, and had children, and the number of their children was great enough to insure the

survival of their group, provided similar conditions of marriage and fertility prevailed among their descendants. Going downward in the scale of social values the average level in respect to children and survival steadily declined. The lowest tenth averaged only about 0.8 of a child per graduate, whereas the upper tenth averaged 2.4. This latter figure is of course very low compared with what we find among farmers for example. Nevertheless it is high enough to be decidedly encouraging. Few people would question that the ten per cent of Yale and Harvard graduates whom their classmates consider most useful stand close to the top in the side of social value. Yet these people rise well above their fellow graduates so far as survival of their type is concerned. Thus at the highest social level of social value the curve of survival turns sharply upward from a very low level, just as it turns sharply downward from a high level at the other end of the side.

We do not know yet how far the conditions found among college graduates prevail among other classes of society. Among college graduates it makes no difference whether we use doctors, lawyers, professors, bankers, business men, farmers or any other profession. In every case the number of children is largest among those who were ranked highest in social value. One of the most important things to discover in the science of eugenics is whether this same thing is true all along the line. We ought to take all the carpenters in a given city, for example, and study them from the point of view of their efficiency, reliability, family relations, and general standing as good citizens. Having thus classified them, it would be of the utmost interest to discover whether the thrifty, hard-working, good-tempered ones have larger families than those of the shiftless, unreliable, and temperamentally unstable type. Again, it would be highly

desirable to take persons of various occupations but all having the same in-
come and the same degree of dependability in their incomes and see how they
compare as to the number of children. Examples of this kind might be mul-
tiplied indefinitely. The point is merely that in our studies of Yale and
Harvard graduates we have seen a distinct and very encouraging augenic ten-
dency which is directly opposed to the dysgenic tendency so strongly appar-
ent in the survival rate of the population as a whole. One of the things
we must need to do is to discover whether this augenic tendency really pre-
vails in all classes of the population.