[New York Times; Apr 9, 1937; pg. 23]
FINDS HOPE IN BOSTON FOR 'AMERICAN RACE'
Dr. Hrdlicka Says 'Excellent Stock' There Is Tallest, and Still Growing
Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES.
BOSTON, April 8.--The "excellent stock" represented in many of Boston's older families is one of the most hopeful influences in the development of a distinct "American race," said Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, curator of the division of anthropology at the National Museum, in an address today before the women's Republican Club.
Dr. Hrdlicka has been investigating the composition of the country's racial development since 1910. He mentioned the aggregation of types in some sections. One of these came for the most part from England and located in cities in New England and the South.
"They lost something distinctly European here, and developed something American," he said. "They are the tallest and largest individuals of any group in America, and they are still growing.
"They are excellent, healthy white stock. It is something of a pity that they can't be kept in an Eden and stay there forever."
He added that what had been a trend toward aggregation had ceased and that now "in some of their strongholds like Boston others are mixing in."
"There is no help for that," he went on, "and perhaps there should not be, for if any stock remains without a mixture it becomes 'stale' and degenerates." [Oh, right.]
In contrast to the healthy old American stock, Dr. Hrdlicka described another of seven racial strains influencing America's growing racial type. The Appalachian mountaineers, ranging from New York State to Alabama and numbering as many as 8,000,000, are the "sore on the American Continent," in an anthropological sense, he said.
"There is something that needs the hearty attention of the biological and anthropological part of America."
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