The cause and control of sex in human offspring.

  • Jackson, R. Clay.
Date:
1926
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The cause and control of sex in human offspring. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    172/222 (page 164)
    164 The Cause and Control of Sex The miners lost from one to three days a week from their work. In this therefore, we catch the first glimpse of the reason why Ashland, with a background of coal mining, produced this heavy excess of female births. With it is carried one very important consideration, namely the highly artificial sex potential which mining induces, and its sudden drop when the group of miners, through idleness, are excessively subjected to sunlight above ground. 376. The two cities of Gilberton and Shenandoah, in 1914, produced, respectively, 29% and 20% excess of males in births. Almost nothing but mining is carried on in or around these places. I have succeeded in a reduction of a large number of units for Pennsylvania, outlined as here exemplified on the basis of indoor as against outdoor labor for both sexes and wherever facts could be obtained, the method of analysis has been very largely satisfactory. The case should be given careful consideration from this view¬ point by those who have hitherto denied significance to statistics. 377. The influence of stone quarrying cannot be overlooked. The city of Barre, Vermont, is termed the granite center of the world. Granite, in various forms composes 85% of the industrial production of the city. 60% of all stone producing territory tributary to Barre lies within the corporate limits of the city, and about 60% of all the quarrymen in Washington county live in the city of Barre. There is of course a large element of labor under shelter in the cutting sheds but this too, at least in summer is subject to some exposure in the yards about the sheds. Some of the quarries reach a depth of 300 or 400 feet, so that in the shade of these high walls some labor is more or less sheltered. The general result is that for 1914-15-16 and 17, the city of Barre produced in births, 640 females and only 646 males. This gives the low male sex ratio of 1.009, or 27 female births above the standard ratio. 378. For the same five years the six quarry cities