anters also
sprang from a class of similar standing, though not so strongly addicted
to intellectual pursuits. Beneath both these classes were the indentured
servants, a few of whom were men of ability forced to pay their passage
by service. But the majority of them were brought to this country
through the advertisements of shipowners and landholders or even
forcibly captured on the streets of cities or transported for crimes and
pauperism. Though all of these classes were of the same race, they were
about as widely divergent as races themselves in point of native ability
and preparatory training.

The third and most important cause of eminence, apart from ancestry, is
the industrial and legal environment. An agricultural community produces
very few eminent men compared with the number produced where
manufactures and commerce vie with agriculture to attract the youth. A
state of widely diversified industrial interests is likely to create
widely diversified intellectual and moral interests. Complicated
problems of industry and politics stimulate the mind and reflect their
influence in literature, art, education, science, and the learned
professions. Most of all, equal opportunity for all classes and large
prizes for the ambitious and industrious serve to stimulate individuals
of native ability to their highest endeavor. It was the deadening
effects of slavery, creating inequalities among the whites themselves,
that smothered the genius of the Southerner whether Englishman,
Huguenot, or Scotch-Irish, and it was the free institutions of the
North that invited their genius to unfold and blossom.

These considerations lead us to look with distrust on the claims of
those who find in race ancestry or in race intermixture the reasons for
such eminence as Americans have attained. While the race factor is
decisive when it marks off inferior and primitive races, yet, in
considering those Europeans races which have joined in our civilization,
the important questions are: From what social classes is immigration
drawn? and, Do our social institutions offer free opportunity and high
incentive to the youth of ability? In so far as we get a choice
selection of immigrants, and in so far as we afford them free scope for
their native gifts, so far do they render to our country the services of
genius, talent, and industry.

=Incentives to Immigration.=--It is the distinctive fact regarding
colonial migration that it was Teutonic in blood