Roswell H. Johnson

America as the "Melting Pot" of peoples is a picture often drawn by writers who do not trouble themselves as to the precision of their figures of speech. It has been supposed by many that all the racial stocks in the United States were tending toward a uniform type. There has never been any real evidence on which to base such a view, and the study completed in 1917 by Dr. AleŠ Hrdlička, curator of the division of physical anthropology of the U. S. National Museum, furnishes evidence against it. He examined 400 individuals of the Old White American stock, that is, persons all of whose ancestors had been in the United States as far as the fourth ascending generation. He found little or no evidence that hereditary traits had been altered. Even the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers, the Virginia cavaliers, the Pennsylvania Dutch and the Huguenots, while possibly not as much unlike as their ancestors were, are in no sense a blend.

The "Melting Pot," it must be concluded, is a figure of speech; and as far as physical anthropology is concerned, it will not be anything more in this country, at least for many centuries.

Announcing the results of study of the first 100 males and 100 females of his series,[199] Dr. Hrdlička said, "The most striking result of the examinations is the great range of variation among Old Americans in nearly all the important measurements. The range of variation is such that in some of the most significant determinations it equals not only the variation of any one group, but the combined variations of all the groups that enter into the composition of the Americans." This fact would be interpreted by the geneticist as an evidence of hybridity. It is clear that, at the very beginning, a number of diverse, although not widely differing, stocks must have made up the colonial population; and intermarriage and the influence of the environment have not welded these stocks into one blend, but have merely produced a mosaic-like mixture. This is good evidence of the permanence of inherited traits, although it must be qualified by the statement that it does not apply equally to all features of the body, the face, hands and feet having been found less variable, for instance, than stature and form of head.

The stature of both American men and women is high, higher than the average of any European nation except the Scotch. The individual variation is, however, enormous, amounting to 16.4% of the average in males and nearly 16% in females. For males, 174 cm. is the average height, for females 162. The arm spread in males is greater than their stature, in females it is less.

The average weight of the males is 154 lbs.[typo: missing comma?] of the females 130. Taking into consideration the tall stature, these weights are about equal to those among Europeans.

The general proportions of the body must be classed as medium, but great fluctuations are shown.

The face is, in general, high and oval; in females it occasionally gives the impression of narrowness. The forehead is well developed in both sexes. The nose is prevalently long and of medium breadth, its proportions being practically identical with those of the modern English. The ears are longer than those of any modern immigrants except the English. The mouth shows medium breadth in both sexes, and its averages exactly equal those obtained for modern French.

One of the most interesting results is that there were obtained among these first 200 individuals studied no pronounced blonds, although the ancestry is North European, where blondness is more or less prevalent.[200] The exact distribution is:

	Male	Female
Light-brown	12%	16%
Medium-brown to dark	77%	68%
Very dark	11%	6%
Golden-red and red	0%	10%

Dr. Hrdlička's classification of the eye is as follows:

	Male	Female
Gray	2%	4%
Greenish	7%	10%
Blues	54%	50%
Browns	37%	36%

The head among Old Americans is in many cases notable for its good development, particularly in males. Among 12 groups of male immigrants[201] measured at Ellis Island under Dr. Hrdlička's direction in recent years, not one group quite equals in this respect the Americans, the nearest approach being noted in the Irish, Bohemians, English, Poles, and North Italians. The type of head, however, differs among the Americans very widely, as is the case with most civilized races at the present day.

Head form is most conveniently expressed by means of the cephalic index, that is, the ratio of breadth to length. Anthropologists generally speak of any one with an index of 75 (or where the breadth is 75% of the length) and below this as dolichocephalic, or long-headed; from 75 to 80 is the class of the mesocephalic, intermediates; while above 80 is that of the subbrachycephalic and brachycephalic, or round-headed. For the most part, the Old Americans fall into the intermediate class, the average index of males being 78.3 and that of females 79.5.

Barring a few French Huguenots, the Old Americans considered here are mostly of British ancestry, and their head form corresponds rather closely to that of the English of the present day. In England, as is well known, the round-headed type of Central and Eastern Europe, the Alpine or Celto-Slav type, has few representatives. The population is composed principally of long-headed peoples, deriving from the two great European stocks, the Nordic and the Mediterranean. To the latter the frequency of dark hair and brown eyes is probably due, both in England and America.

While the average of the Old Americans corresponds closely to the average of the English, there is a great deal of variation in both countries. Unfortunately, it is impossible to compare the present Americans with their ancestors, because measurements of the latter are lacking. But to assume that the early colonists did not differ greatly from the modern English is probably justifiable. A comparison of modern Americans (of the old white stock) with modern English should give basis for an opinion as to whether the English stock underwent any marked modifications, on coming to a new environment.

It has already been noted that the average cephalic index is practically the same; the only possibility of a change then lies in the amount of variability. Is the American stock more or less variable? Can a "melting pot" influence be seen, tending to produce homogeneity, or has change of environment rather produced greater variability, as is sometimes said to be the case?

The amount of variability is most conveniently measured by a coefficient known as the standard deviation σ, which is small when the range of variation is small, but large when diversity of material is great. The following comparisons of the point at issue may be made.[202]

For the men, little difference is discernible. The Old Americans are slightly more long-headed than the English, but the amount of variation in this trait is nearly the same on the two sides of the ocean.

The average of the American women is 79.5 with σ = 2.6. No suitable series of English women has been found for comparison.[203] It will be noted that the American women are slightly more round-headed than the men; this is found regularly to be the case, when comparisons of the head form of the two sexes are made in any race.

In addition to establishing norms or standards for anthropological comparison, the main object of Dr. Hrdlička's study was to determine whether the descendants of the early American settlers, living in a new environment and more or less constantly intermarrying, were being amalgamated into a distinct sub-type of the white race. It has been found that such amalgamation has not taken place to any important degree. The persistence in heredity of certain features, which run down even through six or eight generations, is one of the remarkable results brought out by the study.

If the process could continue for a few hundred years more, Dr. Hrdlička thinks, it might reach a point where one could speak of the members of old American families as of a distinct stock. But so far this point has not been reached; the Americans are almost as diverse and variable, it appears, as were their first ancestors in this country.