where contributory influences, such as professional selection and the like, come into operation.[1]
A most important point in this connection is the great variability of city populations in size. All observers comment upon this. It is of profound significance. The people of the west and east ends in each city differ widely. The population of the aristocratic quarters is often found to exceed in stature the people of the tenement districts. Manouvrier (1888) has analyzed the Parisians most suggestively in this respect, giving a map to show his results. In Madrid also it appears that the well-to-do people are nearly two inches taller on the average than the residents of the poorer quarters.[2] We should expect this, of course, as a direct result of the depressing influence of unfavorable environment. Yet there is apparently another factor underlying that—viz., social selection. While cities contain so large a proportion of degenerate physical types as on the average to fall below the surrounding country in stature, nevertheless they also are found to include an inordinately large number of very tall and well-developed individuals. In other words, compared with the rural districts where all men are subject to the same conditions of life, we discover in the city that the population has differentiated into the very tall and the very short. This is true in Hamburg;[3] it holds good in many of the cities of Switzerland, especially in Basle,[4] where it has been found that the percentage of tall men, over five feet seven inches in height, is nearly twice that in the country roundabout. At the same time the stunted individuals are in the same city two and a half times as frequent as outside the city walls. In Modena a similar frequency of very tall men has been noted.[5] The explanation is simple. The tall men are in the main those vigorous, mettlesome, presumably healthy individuals, who have themselves, or in the person of their fathers, come to the city in search of the prizes which urban life has to offer to the successful. On the other hand, the degenerate, the stunted, those who entirely outnumber the others, so far as to drag the average for the city as a whole below the normal, are the grist turned out by the city mill. They are the product of the tenement, the sweat shop, vice, and crime. Of course, normally developed men, as ever, constitute the main bulk of the population; but these two widely divergent classes attain a very considerable representation. As an example of the influence of such selection, Dr. Beddoe remarks upon the noticeably short stature of all the
