The hypothesis that Americans have come to value personal achievement less in the past half century has been supported by impressionistic arguments and by indirect measures of value change such as Lowenthal's content analysis of trends over the years in heroes of magazine biography. Lowenthal's findings are juxtaposed with a forgotten body of historical survey data on children's choices of exemplars since the turn of the century. The survey data suggest that indirect indices such as magazine biographies are not adequate measures of values. In general, the value change hypothesis is not supported.