As to the details of vocational guidance, the eugenist is perhaps not
entitled to give much advice; yet it seems likely that a more thorough
study of the inheritance of ability would be of value to the educator.
It was pointed out in Chapter IV that inheritance often seems to be
highly specialized,--a fact which leads to the inference that the son
might often do best in his father's calling or vocation, especially if
his mother comes from a family marked by similar capacities. It is
difficult to say how far the occupation of the son is, in modern
conditions, determined by heredity and how far it is the result of
chance, or the need of taking the first job open, the lack of any
special qualifications for any particular work, or some similar
environmental influence. Miss Perrin investigated 1,550 pairs of fathers
and sons in the English _Dictionary of National Biography_ and an equal
number in the English _Who's Who_. "It seems clear," she concluded,
"that whether we take the present or the long period of the past
embraced by the Dictionary, the environmental influences which induce a
man in this country to follow his father's occupation must have remained
very steady." She found the coefficient of contingency[180] between
occupation of father and occupation of son in _Who's Who_ to be .
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