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Show 24 Liberty October 15, 1927 The Light Eyes HAVE IT WHITE 10 n-9 n-8 n-7 n-6 n-5 n-4 n-3 N-2 n-l 0 BLACK Classifying the Complexions of Distinguished Americans An Article by Charles J. McGuirk (Reading time: 18 minutes.) [Editor's Note: This is the third and last of a series of articles based on answers to a questionnaire sent to every man listed in Who's Who in America in an effort to determine the height, weight, and eye color of the typical eminent American. Of the 14,709 replies received before the articles were written, 13,652 answered the last question. The average height has been established as 5 feet 9.5 inches, and the average weight as 165 pounds. This article deals with the color of the eyes that have looked upon success.] T HE third result of the Liberty questionnaire which sought to obtain a composite picture of the typical eminent American and the possible influence of physical traits on greatness concerned itself with the color of his eyes and proved the most interesting of the lot. It suggests a possible explanation of why this nation is a democracy instead of a British commonwealth, free state, dominion, or colony; why we finally entered the World War after standing aloof for three years; why an organization like the Ku Klux Klan should originate and flourish here; why an argument like Fundamentalism versus Evolution should be able to shake the nation; and why prohibition should be made part of our Constitution and then be openly flouted by men who directly or indirectly assisted in making it a law. The possible explanation of these social phenomena is that this nation is light-eyed, Nordic, despite the fact that for 400 years its eyes have been growing steadily darker because of climatic conditions and intermarriage with darker-eyed people. But the most remarkable of the results yielded by the questionnaire is the revealing of eminent Americans as remaining persistently the lightest-eyed group among their countrymen. The eminent American is 36 per cent more light-eyed than the descendants of his original light-eyed ancestors-Dr. Ales Hrdlicka's Old Americans-who settled this country. It is reasonable to suppose his percentage of light-eyedness is greater than that of the Union and Confederate soldiers in the Civil War; but, even compared with the records of the Union soldiers alone, as compiled by Gould from a study of men from the Northern States and the border States of West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, he holds his own. Gould's group out-light-eyes him by only 2.2 per cent. He wins over the soldiers of the World War by 7.2 per cent, and over the general population, as represented by eight groups counted on the streets of New York City and at the Grand Central Terminal, by 14 per cent. The figures which follow, and from which our conclusions are drawn, offer an enormous margin of error. There is no real standard for the measurement of eye color. The vast majority of human eyes are mixed. There are very few pure blues, browns, or blacks. Unless figures are made with the aid of a color chart, each pair of eyes being compared with an exact color, the classes are apt to vary widely. Then, too, few people know exactly the color of their own eyes. The literature of anthropology contains few dependable figures on eye color. Dr. Hrdlicka, who published almost the first figures approach ing exactness in his study of 1,009 Old Americans, wrote: There have been many former attempts at a satisfactory classification of eye color, and several " standards " have been made which record these colors. Being largely empirical, however, none of these, either classifications or standards, is fully satisfactory. Having disavowed any intention of being a scientist, and having admitted in advance that, our figures might not be absolutely accurate, though insisting that our conclusions are obvious, we set down the figures. There were 13,652 of the 14,709 replies to that part of Liberty's questionnaire concerning eye color. They were divided as follows: blue, 5,862; gray, 3,123; green, 124; hazel, 833; brown, 3,570; and black, 140. These groups were consolidated into three groups and reduced to percentages for purposes of comparison and reappeared thus: Blue and gray, 66 per cent; mixed and brown, 33 per cent; black and dark brown, 1 per cent. Comparing our figures with Dr. Hrdlicka's, we had to regroup them to his standard. The comparative percentages of his group and that of the questionnaire follow: Blue Gray-green Old Americans 23.8 7.2 Questionnaire 43 24 a superiority of 36 per cent of the modern [CONTINUED ON PAGE TWENTY-SEVEN] |