In 1900 there were also thirty-two million descendants of white persons who had come to the United States after the First Census, yet of these over twenty million were either foreign born or the children of persons born abroad. If this ratio of increase remained the same, the American stock would apparently maintain its own, even in the midst of twentieth century immigration. But the birth rate of the foreign stock, especially among the recent comers, is much higher than of the native American stock. Conditions have so changed that, according to the Census, the American people "have concluded that they are only about one-half as well able to rear children--at any rate, without personal sacrifice--under the conditions prevailing in 1900 as their predecessors proved themselves to be under the conditions which prevailed in 1790." The difficulty of ascertaining ethnic influences increases immeasurably when we pass from the physical to the mental realm. There are subtle interplays of delicate forces and reactions from environment which no one can measure. Leadership nevertheless is the gift of but few races; and in the United States eminence in business, in statecraft, in letters and learning can with singular directness be traced in a preponderating proportion to this American stock. In 1891 Henry Cabot Lodge published an essay on _The Distribution of Ability in the United States_,[6] based upon the 15,514 names in Appleton's _Cyclopedia of American Biography_ (1887). He "treated as immigrants all persons who came to the United States after the adoption of the Constitution," and on this division he found 14,243 "Americans" and 1271 "immigrants" distributed racially as follows: AMERICANS IMMIGRANTS English 10,376 English 345 Scotch-Irish 1439 German 245 German 659 Irish 200 Huguenot 589 Scotch 151 Scotch 436 Scotch-Irish 88 Dutch 336 French 63 Welsh 159 Canadian and Irish 109 British Colonial 60 French 85 Scandinavian 18 Scandinavian 31 Welsh 16 Spanish 7 Belgian 15 Italian 7 Swiss 15 Swiss 5 Dutch 14 Greek 3 Polish 13 Russian 1 Hungarian 11 Polish 1 Italian 10 Greek 3 Russian 2 Spanish 1 Portuguese 1