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From the preceding discussion, we may formulate the principal problems that must be taken up in a study of the population of the United States. We have to investigate first the degree of homogeneity of the population; second, the hereditary characteristics of the existing lines; third, the influence of environment; fourth, the influences of selection. On the basis of the data thus collected, we have to interpret the significance of the differences between various types, and investigate the bearing that our results may have upon public policies.

The study of the adult population alone would not give us adequate data to enable us to clear up the causes which determine the final development of the body—the events which take place during the period of growth must also be taken into consideration.

Familiarity with the bodily forms of children is necessary also from a morphological point of view. On the whole, the development of individuals is divergent, so that the most characteristic forms of each type are found in the adult male. The adult female forms are not quite so divergent, perhaps in part for the reason that the period of development of the female is shorter than that of the male, although it must be remembered that secondary sexual characteristics are present in childhood. The younger the human form that we investigate, the less clearly are racial characteristics expressed. We may, therefore, say that the most generalized forms of a racial type will be found in the infant or, even still more clearly, in prenatal stages, while the most highly specialized local forms will be found in the male adult. A knowledge of the specialized forms ought to include, therefore, a study of progressive differentiation. Particularly for the study of the influences of environment it is indispensable that the development of the body in childhood should be studied while the influences are still at work. We have to know the conditions which bring about retardation or acceleration in the development of various parts of the body, and their ultimate effects upon the human form. We must study other minute changes that may perhaps not be related to retardation or acceleration, but that may be due to a direct effect of environmental causes. In the adult these changes have been completed and can no longer be subjected to analysis, while in the growing child, their gradual development and unfolding may be observed.

The same is true with regard to selection. If selection is related to bodily form, it will probably act with particular intensity during the early years of childhood. It might be revealed by a comparison of the surviving and dying parts of the population of various ages.

These considerations make it quite necessary to include in the study of the population, not only adults, but also children.

One method of approach should consist, therefore, in the study of the growth and development of children, classified according to descent and geographical and social environment. If it were feasible to include records of the longevity of the individuals measured in childhood, the problem of selection could also be attacked. In the study of adults a careful classification according to descent and social position will be necessary.

The phenomena of homogeneity and of heredity make it necessary that the investigation should not be confined to studies of individuals, but that the anatomical characteristics of families should be made the subject of inquiry.

A considerable amount of work has been done by many investigators, throwing light upon a number of aspects of the problems here discussed. The earliest and most extensive series of observations was collected in connection with the War of the Rebellion and was published by Gould and Baxter.^[17] Their well-known statistics, which have been quoted again and again, give data with regard to the stature of enlisted men according to their nativity, descent, and occupation, and reveal the facts that inhabitants of different parts of the United States differ in their physical development; that the differences between the various European nationalities are repeated here; but that in every single case, the members of a certain nationality exceed in bulk of body the corresponding European series; and, finally, that certain differences may be observed between groups of individuals following different occupations.

The next important inquiry relating to our subject was an investigation of school children of Boston by Henry P. Bowditch,^[18] in which similar differences appeared. Bowditch also showed that the differences between various nationalities persisted throughout the period of growth, and that marked differences are found according to social stratification. Classification of the population according to the occupation of the parents showed a better development among the commercial and professional classes than is found among unskilled labor. Soon after Bowditch’s investigation similar inquiries were instituted by Peckham^[19] in Milwaukee, and later on in a number of other cities—Worcester, Mass.;^[20] St. Louis, Mo.;^[21] Toronto, Canada;^[22] Oakland, Cal.,^[23] etc. On the whole, the methods pursued were similar to those applied by Bowditch, and the results proved the occurrence of analogous phenomena. Porter, in his investigation in St. Louis, added to his inquiries the problem of the relative development of the children of varying mental achievement, and demonstrated a difference in the development of what he called precocious and dull children. Work of this type was gradually taken up by educational institutions and the effort was made to correlate physical development with school work, with a view to demonstrating a practical way of assigning a child to his proper developmental stage.

In similar investigations in Europe attention had been called to the fact that the measurement of children of different ages and the calculation of a growth curve on this basis does not give us adequate information with regard to the details of the phenomena of growth, and it was pointed out that repeated measurements of the same individual are necessary to obtain fuller records. In spite of numerous efforts that have been made to obtain such series, it has not been possible up to the present time to follow out the development of the same individual from childhood to adult life, at least not in numbers that are sufficient for a clear understanding of the phenomena involved in this process.

A certain amount of material bearing upon stature and weight has been collected by life insurance companies. This, however, is probably to a great extent so uncertain that it is only of slight use for scientific investigations. Military statistics taken in the United States since the War of the Rebellion are not numerous and not very extensive. A certain amount of work was done during the recent war, but the results have only now been made accessible. The only fairly extended investigation of families that has been undertaken in the United States was made in connection with the work of the Immigration Commission, during which a fairly large number of Jewish, Bohemian, Italian, and Scotch families were studied in such a manner that the phenomena of heredity could be considered in some detail.

We have practically no material whatever bearing upon the facts of racial mixture. It is particularly worth remembering that there are hardly any investigations to speak of that bear upon the physiological development of the Negro and Mulatto population. In view of the ever-repeated claim that the Mulatto is inferior in physical development to either the pure Negro or to the White, and considering the large number of Mulattoes in our population, it seems of fundamental importance that an investigation of this kind should be made.

Although less important from a practical point of view than the Negro problem, race mixture between Whites and Indians has received some attention. Material collected in 1892 shows that the half-blood, so far as fertility and stature are concerned, is superior to the full-blood Indians.^[24] The observations relating to fertility were confirmed by the material collected in the census of 1910.^[25] Recently an inquiry into the characteristics of the half-bloods of Minnesota was made by Professor Albert E. Jenks.^[26] We are still lacking, however, full investigations into the anatomical and physiological characteristics of half-bloods.

The problem of the intermixture between Negro and White and Negro and Indian has hardly been touched at all. A few studies of Negro children and soldiers do not contribute much to our knowledge. A systematic study of the problem was made by Felix von Luschan in 1915, but the results of his observations are not yet available. Another important inquiry is that by Eugen Fischer on the Rehobother Bastards, the descendants mainly of Dutch settlers and Hottentots in South Africa. This is the only work in which the anthropological characteristics of the Mulattoes have been taken up in detail. The theoretical as well as the practical importance of the investigation of the Mulatto question can hardly be sufficiently emphasized. On the one hand, we may hope to obtain by this means an insight into the laws of heredity in man. On the other hand, the well-being of so many millions of citizens of our country is involved that the most painstaking inquiry should be demanded. This is the more urgent since many States have regulated race intermixture by laws which are based simply upon public prejudice without the shadow of knowledge of the underlying biological facts—without even the knowledge of the peculiar form of racial intermixture that characterizes the relations between Whites and Negroes in the United States. In by far the greater number of cases the mother is a Negress and the father a White man. This results in an infusion of White blood into the Negro race without affecting materially the White race. A searching analysis of the hereditary characteristics of the racial groups has not yet been made. It is true that the records of morbidity suggest typical physiological differences, but considering the fact that similar differences are found between different social groups of the same race, it is not possible without further investigation to distinguish definitely between the influences of heredity and of social environment.^[27]

I refrain from giving a detailed bibliography and review of the anthropometric material collected in the United States in view of the very excellent collection of titles made by Professor Bird T. Baldwin, of the Bureau of Child Study of the University of Iowa.^[28]

[17]	B. A. Gould, Investigations in the Military and Anthropological Statistics of American Soldiers (New York, 1869).

[18]	H. P. Bowditch, “The Growth of Children,” 8th Annual Report, Massachusetts Board of Health (Boston, 1875), pp. 273-323; 10th Annual Report (1879), pp. 33-62; 21st Annual Report (1890), pp. 287-304; 22nd Annual Report (1891), pp. 479-525.

[19]	C. W. Peckham, “The Growth of Children,” 6th Annual Report of the State Board of Health of Wisconsin (1881), pp. 28-73.

[20]	Franz Boas and Clark Wissler, “Statistics of Growth,” Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education for 1904 (Washington, 1905), pp. 25-132.

[21]

W. T. Porter in the Transactions of the Academy of Sciences of St. Louis, “The Physical Basis of Precocity and Dullness” (1893), pp. 161-181; “The Relation between the Growth of Children and their Deviation from the Physical Type of Their Sex and Age” (1893), pp. 263-280; “The Growth of St. Louis Children” (1894), pp. 263-380; also Quarterly Publications of the American Statistical Association, N. S., vol. 3 (1893), pp. 577-587; vol. 4 (1894), pp. 28-34.

[22]	Franz Boas, “The Growth of Toronto Children,” Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education for 1896-97 (Washington, 1898), pp. 1541-1599.

[23]	Franz Boas, “The Growth of First-Born Children,” Science, N. S., vol. 1 (1895), pp. 402-404.

[24]

Franz Boas, “The Half-Blood Indian, an Anthropometric Study,” Popular Science Monthly, vol. 45 (1894), pp. 761-770 (see pp. 138 et seq. of this volume). Louis R. Sullivan, “Anthropometry of the Siouan Tribes,” Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, vol. 23, Part III (1920), p. 199.

[25]	Roland B. Dixon, Indian Population in the United States and Alaska, 1910 (Washington, 1915), pp. 157-160.

[26]	“Indian-White Amalgamation,” University of Minnesota Studies in Social Science, No. 6 (Minneapolis, 1916).

[27]	See also E. B. Reuter, The Mulatto in the United States (Boston, 1918).

[28]	“The Physical Growth of Children from Birth to Maturity,” Iowa Child Welfare Research Station Study, vol. 1 (1921), No. 1.