Well, last time I counted (or rather read), John D. Rockefeller Sr.
had 92 descendants. How's that? If you can afford to support 'em,
what's the problem? This is the the key--used to be, in order to
support a large family and ensure your genes would go forth and
multiply, you had to be exceptionally intelligent or exceptionally
hardworking--else they'd all starve to death. In our present
enlightened society, the least intelligent and those least inclined
toward productive activities are financially supported by those more
intelligent/productive--and it is they who produce herds of
descendants. American society is subsidizing its own destruction.
As to grandma--good for her. She makes my point above. We need more.
jm
On 30 Jan 2001, at 11:30, Michael Lorrey wrote:
> John Marlow wrote:
> >
> > You know how many captains of industry were grade school dropouts?
>
> Sure. Plenty, but how many kids did they have???
>
> However, most of them were raised in a day and age when you didn't need
> a law degree to be a practicing lawyer, an engineering degree to design
> and build bridges, mills, and ships, and the concept of the MBA was a
> mere gleam in the eyes of university provosts.
>
> Most such individuals were home schooled, in fact, and frankly I'd pit a
> kid with a 6th grade education from 1920 against a current day high
> school graduate (or college graduate, even, depending on the college and
> major).
>
> My grandmother was one such person, she dropped out of school after 6th
> grade to raise her 8 brothers and sisters when her mother died (her
> father was an unemployed alcoholic). She worked as a seamstress and maid
> in some rich person's mansion, then as a beautician, then she met my
> grandfather who became a publishing executive. She never went back to
> school, but was the New England Scrabble champion, president of the New
> Hampshire Floral Association, and best of all, taught me to read at age
> four. She was one tough cookie, a terror to my mother. If she had chosen
> to go into business I am sure she would have been the epitome of the
> 'brass balled bitch' type of female executive and would have fit just
> fine into any Rand or Heinlein novel. She was a very self confident and
> self aware person who read voraciously her entire life (and not romance
> novel crap either). She had three kids, which was pretty below average
> for 1940.
>
John Marlow
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