As to the details of vocational guidance, the eugenist is perhaps not entitled to give much advice; yet it seems likely that a more thorough study of the inheritance of ability would be of value to the educator. It was pointed out in Chapter IV that inheritance often seems to be highly specialized,--a fact which leads to the inference that the son might often do best in his father's calling or vocation, especially if his mother comes from a family marked by similar capacities. It is difficult to say how far the occupation of the son is, in modern conditions, determined by heredity and how far it is the result of chance, or the need of taking the first job open, the lack of any special qualifications for any particular work, or some similar environmental influence. Miss Perrin investigated 1,550 pairs of fathers and sons in the English _Dictionary of National Biography_ and an equal number in 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."