INTELLIGENCE TESTS OF CERTAIN
IMMIGRANT GROUPS

By Professor KIMBALL YOUNG

UNIVERSITY OF OREGON

HE influx of the foreigner into this country only became a

THE

serious problem with the shifting of the Old World source of the immigration from North to South Europe. The early situation in our national history was relatively simple. We had up to the Revolution, and forty years beyond, what constituted a genuine colonization. In fact, it was only after 1820 that a definite count was made of immigration. Even from this date until the Civil War, though the arrival of new-comers from Europe was constantly accelerated, the type of migration made for colonization of our free land and permanent citizenship. In the two decades following the outbreak of the Civil War, the curve of yearly increase of immigration began to rise very rapidly, yet the source of the stream still remained Northern and Western Europe and the British Isles. The destination of this immigration, however, began to be more and more the rising industrial centers of our country and decreasingly so the rural districts-although it appears that the peasantry of Scandinavia and Germany often continued into the free lands of the Far West, the industrial workers of Great Britain, Germany and the bulk of the Irish went into the urban centers more particularly. Wherever this immigration went, it nevertheless fitted fairly readily into our socio-economic folkways and mores, and the biological amalgamation of the "Older Immigration," as it has been called, was in line with the racial stocks2 already in the country.

1 The existence of free land in America has had considerable influence upon our theories of government, our attitudes toward property, freedom and the socio-economic order generally. The significance of free land for racial amalgamation and cultural assimilation has been no less important, but less often noted.

2 Race is used in this article in the popular rather than in the strict anthropological sense. Properly speaking there are no "races" in Europe, but only "sub-races."' Cf. Retzius, "The So-Called North European Race of Mankind." Jr. Roy. Anthrop. Institute, 39: 277-313. Cf. also introductory chapter in Reuter, E. B., The Mulatto (1918) on use of term "race."

Vol. XV.-27.

1

418

THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

With the ever-increasing concentration of industrial controls and the accompanying specialization, and withal simplification of production processes due to the introduction of machine methods, the demand for cheaper, semi-skilled and unskilled labor became imperative. The rise of Germany to industrial power, the reaching of a point of stable population growth in Great Britain and the Scandinavian countries eliminated them as sources of this cheap labor. In consequence, we have a noteworthy change to the South and Southeast of Europe, and even to Western Asia, for this supply. In the short span of twenty years the shift in the center of gravity of the immigration to this country became the "common talk" of economics, sociology, political science and demography. The following table illustrates the now familiar facts:

TABLE 13

SHOWING THE SHIFT IN THE SOURCE OF IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES

Country

(In terms of percentages of total from various sources)

Year Per cent. Year Per cent. Year Per cent.

The complete significance of this change in the source of our immigration we do not yet know. If the theory of General F. A. Walker be true, we may doubt whether immigration has been as important or necessary for the growth of the country, since 1850 anyway, as some persons imagine. Had we had no immigration from the middle of the last century on, according to Walker, our present population would be as large as it is to-day, but racially we should be a much more homogeneous people, or, at least, in the way of becoming so.

Now the meaning of the coming of the "New Immigration," as that from Southern Europe has been called, in the matter of racial mixture is an unknown quantity. The writer believes, however, that there is accumulating evidence from studies in general

3 Table compiled from Ellwood, C. A., Modern Social Problems (1913) and reports of immigration. The term "Russian Empire" in the table included Russian Poland and other sections now cut away from the former empire. Racially most of the contribution from Russia was Hebraic or Polish rather than strictly Russian.

intelligence of certain immigrant groups, at least, which material, coupled with the results of researches in the inheritance of mental traits, should cause us to consider rather carefully the bearing which these facts may have on features of the racial mixture that will surely come out of the shift in the source and nature of immigration.

The present paper will deal specifically with certain samples of the South European immigration in terms of general intelligence. The special question is: Leaving aside physical characteristics, differences in emotional traits and cultural contacts, what are the significant findings of psychology concerning the general intelligence of certain of these immigrant groups that have come to us so overwhelmingly in the past thirty years?

The nature of general intelligence need not detain us here. The uninformed should refer to the long series of important studies upon this question initiated by Binet in France, and expanded by Stern and his pupils in Germany, and particularly by Goddard, Terman, Thorndike and Yerkes in the United States, and more recently still taken up by a group of English psychologists-Webb, Burt, Hart and others. There are obviously several problems as to the exact nature of so-called general intelligence, its growth, its importance in successful life career, and especially as to its innateness (that is in potentia). On the latter point, the evidence at hand seems sufficiently valid to establish that general as well as specific abilities are transmitted by heredity. The precise biological nature of the units involved we do not yet know. Special talents may actually turn out to be due to the presence of separate units in the germ plasm, and all-around ability may be due to a conflux of several factors-multiple and difficult to segregate in the chromosomes. Whether in fact, general intelligence is shown to be simply a convergence of special traits in certain patterns, as Thorndike might assume, or whether due to a more general factor as Spearman seems to hold is unimportant for our present paper. Though the entire data on the mechanism of inheritance are not at hand, and even admitting that the subtle influences of environment have not always been completely segregated and controlled in the studies made, the writer believes that our social programs for education, Americanization, amalgamation of the foreigner racially, can not nonchalantly ignore these important implications.

4 Studies of the second and third generation of certain immigrant stocks are beginning to accumulate, but so far we lack psychological measures of the mental capacity of these various generations,-more especially of the strains that have gone into the mixtures. The writer, however, is in much sympathy with such studies as Drachsler's and others.

The studies of Galton, Woods, Pearson, Davenport, Thorndike, Earle, Starch, and others revealing the inheritance of intellectual traits appear reliable enough, irrespective of the peculiar biological form which subsequent research may reveal, to make the present status of the mentality of immigrant groups, if known, rather prognostic, to say the least, of what the mentality of the future. generations of these peoples will be. In other words, the evidence appears rather conclusive for the inheritance of mental abilities, and if general intelligence tests reveal a given level of intelligence in an immigrant group may we not assume that we can predict something of the mental endowment which such a group will add to the future mixtures with other racial groups?

It is well recognized by all persons interested in racial mentality and has been recently reiterated by Major Leonard Darwin' that what we want is a high average intelligence in the masses, not a small group of selected superior intelligences, with the bulk of the population of low or inferior intelligence. Out of the constantly changing matrix of a high average intelligence will arise the superior-minded persons who will be able to make the outstanding cultural contributions of the future, while the good average mentality of the masses makes for solid citizenship, appreciation of high cultural values and successful group spirit. Any mixture which will lower the level of intelligence of a group and restrict the variability of the same will be deleterious. For instance, if the average intelligence of certain of the South European stocks which have come to us in the past twenty-five years should prove to be as high as that of the older American stock (i. e., of North European ancestry) the problem of mixing the older and the newer stocks, so far as general intelligence is concerned, will not be serious. However, on the other hand, if the Latins, say, who come to us should prove to be but four fifths as intelligent on the average and less variable when compared with the North European offspring in this country, the racial mixture between the two may be damaging to the welfare of the country.

With the methods of testing general intelligence that have come out of psychological investigation and with the implication of heredity in mental endowment, let us review the significant studies which throw light on the matter of immigrant mentality. On the basis of these we may then be able to note certain important bearings of these findings on the problem of immigration as it relates to racial mixture and the general intelligence of our future population.

Darwin, L., "The Field of Eugenic Reform." THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY, 13: 392.

The writer will review three or four studies made during the past five years which deal with racial stocks in various parts of this country and will then add notes on his own contribution which grew out of a rather extended investigation of certain South European groups in California.

In one chapter of the published data from the psychological testing of men in the army is shown the relative standing in the mental tests of the foreign-born men of various nationalities found in that portion of the army which was tested. Each man tested in the army was given a final letter rating ranging from A to E depending upon his raw score in either the alpha, beta or individual test. The alpha, as is now well-known, was devised for literates of ten years mental age and above, the beta was devised primarily for men of low-grade mentality, but was also used for illiterates or for men who did not understand the English language well enough to handle alpha. The individual tests were exclusively used for low-grade mentalities who did not score well or at all in the group tests (alpha and beta.) The men of high mentality were given ratings of A and B. Men in these classes were considered, other things being equal, as being prospective officer material. Grades C and D made up men of the grades of privates, but those of D rating were discovered to be rather poor military "risks," to borrow a term from insurance practice.

The following nationality groups are selected as samples from a longer list showing the rank order of countries according to the percentage of men in each nationality group receiving their final letter ratings in D, D-, and E, and also in A and B.

TABLE II7

SHOWING THE PERCENTAGE OF MEN OF SAMPLE NATIONALITIES RECEIVING FINAL LETTER RATINGS UNDER THE GIVEN CLASSIFICATIONS

Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, 15. Psychological Examining in the United States Army, Pt. III, pp. 693-700.

7 op. cit. p. 696: The omitted nationality groups fall variously in the range of the percentages given in this table. The totals for the white draft and for the total foreign nationalities are given for comparison.