the English _Who's Who_. "It seems clear," she concluded,
"that whether we take the present or the long period of the past
embraced by the Dictionary, the environmental influences which induce a
man in this country to follow his father's occupation must have remained
very steady." She found the coefficient of contingency[180] between
occupation of father and occupation of son in _Who's Who_ to be .75 and
in the _Dictionary of National Biography_ .76. For the inheritance of
physical and mental characters, in general, the coefficient would be
about .5. She thinks, "therefore, we may say that in the choice of a
profession inherited taste counts for about 2/3 and environmental
conditions for about 1/3."

An examination of 990 seventh and eighth grade boys in the public
schools of St. Paul[181] showed that only 11% of them desired to enter
the occupation of their fathers; there was a pronounced tendency to
choose occupations of a more remunerative or intellectual and less
manual sort than that followed by the father. That this preference
would always determine the ultimate occupation is not to be expected, as
a considerable per cent may fail to show the necessary ability.

While inherited tastes and aptitude for some calling probably should
carry a good deal of weight in vocational guidance, we can not share the
exaggerated view which some sociologists hold about the great waste of
ability through the existence of round pegs in square holes. This
attitude is often expressed in such words as those of E. B. Woods:
"Ability receives its reward only when it is presented with the
opportunities of a fairly favorable environment, _its_ peculiarly
indispensable sort of environment. Naval commanders are not likely to be
developed in the Transvaal, nor literary men and artists in the soft
coal fields of western Pennsylvania. For ten men who succeed as
investigators, inventors, or diplomatists, there may be and probably are
in some communities fifty more who would succeed better under the same
circumstances."

While there is some truth in this view, it exaggerates the evil by
ignoring the fact that good qualities frequently go together in an
individual. The man of Transvaal who is by force of circumstances kept
from a naval career is likely to distinguish himself as a successful
colonist, and perhaps enrich the world even more than if he had been
brought up in a maritime state and become a naval commander. It may be
that his inherit