They classify the
population under four headings: Native White of Native Parentage, Native
White of Foreign Parentage or of Mixed Parentage, Foreign-born White,
and Negro. Except among Foreign-born Whites, who are standing still, the
returns for 1910 show that in every one of these groups the marriage
rate has steadily increased during the past three decades; and that the
age of marriage is steadily declining in all groups during the same
period, with a slight irregularity of no real importance in the
statistics for foreign-born males.
On the whole, then, the marriage statistics of the United States are
reassuring. Even if examination is limited to the Native Whites of
Native Parentage, who are probably of greater eugenic worth, as a group,
than any of the other three, the marriage rate is found to be moving in
the right direction.
But going a step farther, one finds that within this group there are
great irregularities, which do not appear when the group is considered
as a whole. And these irregularities are of a nature to give the
eugenist grave concern.
If one sought, for example, to find a group of women distinctly superior
to the average, he might safely take the college graduates. Their
superior quality as a class lies in the facts that:
(a) They have survived the weeding-out process of grammar and high
school, and the repeated elimination by examinations in college.
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