German 1,960,000
All others 105,000

In 1900 there were also thirty-two million descendants of white
persons who had come to the United States after the First Census, yet
of these over twenty million were either foreign born or the children
of persons born abroad. If this ratio of increase remained the same,
the American stock would apparently maintain its own, even in the
midst of twentieth century immigration. But the birth rate of the
foreign stock, especially among the recent comers, is much higher than
of the native American stock. Conditions have so changed that,
according to the Census, the American people "have concluded that they
are only about one-half as well able to rear children--at any rate,
without personal sacrifice--under the conditions prevailing in 1900 as
their predecessors proved themselves to be under the conditions which
prevailed in 1790."

The difficulty of ascertaining ethnic influences increases
immeasurably when we pass from the physical to the mental realm. There
are subtle interplays of delicate forces and reactions from
environment which no one can measure. Leadership nevertheless is the
gift of but few races; and in the United States eminence in business,
in statecraft, in letters and learning can with singular directness be
traced in a preponderating proportion to this American stock.

In 1891 Henry Cabot Lodge published an essay on _The Distribution of
Ability in the United States_,[6] based upon the 15,514 names in
Appleton's _Cyclopedia of American Biography_ (1887). He "treated as
immigrants all persons who came to the United States after the
adoption of the Constitution," and on this division he found 14,243