Sent from Aleš Hrdlička
20 Sep 1928
Description:

‘My dear Professor Pearson,

I agree to the full with every word you say in your good letter of September 7. Only, conditions are even worse than perhaps you know. Individuality as I mentioned before, is rampant, new instruments are being invented and used by almost every newcomer, old names are thrown aside and new jaw-breakers introduced instead without often any reason or improvement, and youngsters who need most of all ample experience, are trying to dictate what and how measurements should be done. The numbers of measurements have been uselessly multiplied until the whole has become a terrible burden and a handicap to progress, and petty jealousies crop up in many places. There is absolutely no regulation or even elaboration or understanding of the principles underlying rational analyses and graphic presentations of the results. What we progress by, nothwithstanding all this, is a small residuum  of measurements in which gross errors at least can hardly be made.

I despair of seeing these matters mended very much by any international commission that could be organized and act within the next few years. At the International Conference in Geneva in 1912, long before there any such “feelings” as now exist, it was seen time and time again that those propositions prevailed which were backed by the best talker, or by a man who had the most friends present. It was in this way that the wholly irrational method of measuring the chest diameter at the level of the xyphoid catilage was adopted against all my protests. The men who are elected on these commissions are not always the most experienced and enlightened; and they lack both time and means for the understanding of the actual testing of the different methods and ways.

I have come to the conclusion that in anthropometry as elsewhere, there is going on and will go on for some time to come the same old struggle as we see everywhere, from which will come a gradual survival of the fittest. But a great deal could be done to hasten this desirable and by a laboratory such as I mentioned in my first letter; a laboratory where nothing could be advocated except what had been most amply tested and found to be the best.

Once such a laboratory could be established, particularly if it had behind it such a creditable tradition as there would be in your case, and if it advanced slowly, rationally, solidly and impartially, it would not be long, I feel, before no young man in the British Dominions would be regarded as fit for anthropometric work who has not had the benefit of training in that laboratory. And this example would be sure to be followed by similar and necessarily harmonious steps in other countries.

To further assure a success of such a laboratory in England, there could be selected by it a cooperative small body of the best men in these lines, who would act as a sort of honorary but permanent and active commission or committee; to whom every point to be established would be submitted, by whom it would be tested and finally recorded in the most satisfactory form attainable.

We cannot form such a laboratory or institute in the States. We are too young and have neither the tradition nor a sufficient number of experienced workers. France is for the present out of the running, with the death of Manouvrier; the workers in Germany are almost all young and not full fledged, and not quite free of the old “Deutschland über alles”. And the smaller countries with Russia are just trailing. So who is there to undertake this great project except England? And who is there in England more suitable to initiate and organize the matter than yourself, in cooperation especially with the Royal Anthropological Institute and the best and most experienced of your older workers?

I trust you will excuse this long letter; but I feel very deeply on the whole subject, and see no great hope except in this direction.

Cordially yours,

Aleš Hrdlička.’