The Spread of Eugenics

BY: ALLISON BROPHY AND ALYSA CRELLIN

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The Early History of Eugenics

Sir Francis Galton

Sir Francis Galton first established the term eugenics in 1883. Galton was an English mathematician who wrote numerous books and papers and studied mainly statistics. He came up with eugenics as a new brach of science, which worked to improve the racial qualities of future generations. Galton used information that he found in biological dictionaries and records from both Oxford and Cambridge Universities to investigate the familial backgrounds of well respected British judges and statesmen. He found that superior abilities and intelligence was inherited in a large proportion of these families. As his studies expanded and as he entered the latter part of his life, Galton began to promote his ideas. He lectured at numerous prestigious institutions and established a vision for eugenics. Galton died in 1911, but left a quite a stamp on the world. The most receptive audience of his ideas was in the United States. Throughout the early 1900's eugenic ideas spread throughout the nation.

Charles Davenport

Charles Davenport was the prominent leader of the eugenics movement in the United States. Davenport was a biologist and had a tremendous respect for the work of Francis Galton. He also studied Mendel's work on genetics and applied it to human evolution. Davenport became the director of three American eugenic institutions; the Eugenics Record Office (ERO), the Biological Laboratory, and the Carnegie Institute of Washington's Station for Experimental Evolution. He pushed eugenic methods to help prevent births among those deemed unfit.

Davenport, along with other eugenicists, called for sterilizations, segregation, and the incarceration of people considered "feebleminded." He believed that he was working to save the "American" germ plasm. Although few of the problems that Davenport considered to be polluting this germ plasm were in fact inherited, he still pursued his findings. Charles Davenport promoted these eugenic ideas in the U.S. and they were well-received by numerous government officials. The United States began to adopt many eugenic regulations and the movement spread widely through the nation.

Popularization of Eugenics in the United States

The American Eugenics movement began following the social upheaval and economic turmoil resulting from the Civil War. In the late 19th and early 20th century, cities began to explode as the population migrated into more urban and industrial areas. There was a great deal of labor unrest as prices fluctuated and businesses were in and out of bankruptcy. Then, with the onset of World War I, the nation saw an increase in its immigrant population, which only made these problems more noticeable.

As the population in the United States increased, the birthrate among the wealthy and powerful decreased indicating that the upper class was losing the power struggle for existence. This brought into question Darwin's theory based on the "survival of the fittest". The working class was rising and also reproducing. This problem, along with the failure of many previously implemented laissez-faire approaches, led to the demand for a new role of government. A new progressive form of government, managed capitalism, began and with it came reform. Progressive reformers believed that science was the answer and pursued it as a cure for these new social problems. Thus began the popularization of the Eugenics movement within America.

The movement was supported by numerous political, social, and educational figures. These popular and well known progressive reformers funded institutions and eugenic programs throughout the country as well as abroad. Both Rockefeller and Carnegie supported the movement and provided financial funding to help establish institutions which promoted eugenic ideas. Eugenic theories were introduced in educational reform. They were printed in textbooks and preached about in lectures around the country. These science-based ideas entered American popular culture and became the subject of numerous books and films. Eugenic ideas were prevalent in everyday American life and were promoted at local fairs and in everyday newspapers. Eugenics promised the American people prosperity and progress by way of scientific measures that combined genetics and the new industrial technologies of the time.

Eugenic Education

Lectures

Throughout the 1920's and 1930's the American Eugenics Society founded by Harry Crampton, Harry Laughlin, Madison Grant, and Hendry Osborn supported numerous lectures and exhibits which promoted Eugenic ideas and the principles of heredity.

Although many of these lectures were given by well known and much respected figures, Eugenics was also preached in more common venues as well. The eugenics movement, based on scientific theories, managed to work its way into churches and temples throughout the country. In 1926, the American Eugenics Society started a eugenics sermon contest. The contest was judged by well known eugenicist Charles Davenport, as well as literary critic William Lyon Phelps among others. This inspired some 300 eugenic sermons in the United States. During this time, eugenics was preached in Jewish temples as well as Protestant churches. In Missouri, Rabbi Harry H. Mayer gave a special sermon for a mothers day service. During the service, which was convoked by the Council of Jewish Women and the Temple Sisterhood, Mayer promoted numerous Eugenic ideas. Below is a link to the sermon as well as a few selective phrases highlighting eugenic theories -

Eugenics: A Sermon for Mother's Day - Delivered at Temple in Kansas City, Missouri

"Every child is the heir of the strength or the weakness of the family tree of which it is a sprout. The capacity to develop into a genius or the incapacity to be anything but a moron is inherited from our forbears. Our parents may safeguard our material future by bequest of money or lands; they may prepare us for usefulness to society by training us according to our best ability or hire others to train us in schools according to their best ability or hire others to train us in schools according to the best known theories of education, but nothing that a father or mother can do for us in the way of education, in the way of endowment of wealth is comparable to the gift that a parent bestows on a child in handing over to it a good ancestry."

"How vital it is therefore that when a couple mate they should remember the eugenic factors underlying matrimony. However superior one of them may be, if the other is not an equal, physically, mentally and morally, the offspring will be likely to be inferior."

"That prayer should be the prayer of every father and every mother in his or her heart of hearts: “May my offspring be goodly like unto myself; may I do my share to perpetuate and improve the good qualities of my sires.” May we do nothing to permit our blood to be adulterated by infusion of blood of inferior grade. "The crown of the old man are children’s children and the glory of children are their fathers”.

Exhibits

The American Eugenics Society was devoted to the popularization of Eugenics in the United States. Aside from lectures, they also help fund exhibits which were displayed at state fairs. These fairs were held throughout the country; everywhere from Kansas to Massachusetts. Exhibits and presentations were meant to capture the eye of everyday American people. Boards displayed Flashing lights to help emphasize the consequences to American society if these inferior breeds were allowed to reproduce without any government control. Displays warned "some Americans are born to be a burden on the rest." At public fairs which were held throughout the year, these exhibits emphasized what Eugenicists described as a threat to the American Society: the dangerous and defective were reproducing too quickly, while the advantaged people of the nation were reproducing too little. These exhibits spread the eugenics movement to rural areas of the United States and promoted eugenic theories to everyday Americans. People were able to visualize what Eugenicists saw as the downfall of American society.

Literature

Eugenic literature began to become more and more popular throughout the turn of the century. Eugenics took ahold of everything from textbooks to popular fiction novels. "Popular literature from the late 1800s up through the 1930s was littered with eugenics-inspired language about bettering the human race." http://ibiblio.org/pub/electronic-publications/stay-free/archives/22/eugenics-daniel-kevles.html

The book entitled A Eugenics Catechism declared that eugenics would foster "more selective lovemaking" and increase the intelligence within the population. Popular authors of the time, Henry Goddard and Edward Wiggam, travelled the country giving small presentations, which urged the population to be more aware of the feebleminded people of an inferior breed. They urged Americans to join the eugenics movement and recommended policies to control the breeding of American people.

Pivot of Civilization

The Revolt Against Civilization

Brave New World

"How the Other Half Lives - glimpse of urban poor (consequences of immirgation and poverty) leads to misconceptions and the furthering of Eugenic ideas for the more rural population that did not have first-hand knowledge of the situation. Promoted doing away with "feeble minded"

hailed as method to ensure progress for Anglo-Saxon race

Davenport influential in passing Eugenics laws and helping promote the movement which peaked in the 1920's and 1930's.

Combination of urbanization, industrialization, and increasing secularization created society in which Eugenics could easily progress.

Scientists became voices of cultural authority" http://books.google.com/books?id=gZpP9cWRbN4C&dq=eugenics+literature&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=CewXpvVIny&sig=lYqYg7b9p2qdA-eCEVkl4rpdtWw&hl=en&ei=w5ceS668D4uKlAecpeCDDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CCkQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Galton's Article "Hereditary Character and Talent" MacMillan's Magazine

“If a twentieth part of the cost and pains were spent in measures for the improvement of the human race that is spent on the improvement of the breed of horses and cattle, what a galaxy of genius might we not create! We might introduce prophets and high priests of civilization into the world, as surely as we can propagate idiots by mating cretins. Men and women of the present day are, to those we might hope to bring into existence, what the pariah dogs of the streets of an Eastern town are to our own highly-bred varieties.”

War Against The Weak Video

Schooling

As the Eugenics movement spread throughout the nation, it also began to catch on in the educational system. With the new educational reform, the movement was able to reach deeper into the minds of some of the country’s most influential researchers and many important policy makers. In the early part of the 20th century, Eugenics began to play a key role in the training of teachers, the development of new school curriculums, as well as in the organization of school systems. The idea that some students were genetically more gifted and intelligent than others penetrated deep into the educational system. Schools began to implement special programs for such students and a division of classes based on intelligence became quite common. They based intelligence levels of students on IQ tests. These tests were a favorite tool of Eugenicists and enabled them to decipher between inferior and superior students and place them in classes accordingly.

Eugenic ideas also made their way into college curriculums around the country. In 1914 there were 44 courses offered in the subject of Eugenics and 14 years later in 1928, there were over 375. As the movement caught on, major figures in education began to write new textbooks, which made their way into classrooms in both high schools and colleges throughout the United States. These books contained material based on the eugenic idea of reproduction along with other Eugenic principles. One such textbook, called The Measurement of Intelligence written by Stanford University Professor Lewis Terman contained the following passage.

“Among laboring men and servant girls there are thousands like them [feebleminded individuals]. They are the world's "hewers of wood and drawers of water." And yet, as far as intelligence is concerned, the tests have told the truth. ... No amount of school instruction will ever make them intelligent voters or capable voters in the true sense of the word. ... The fact that one meets this type with such frequency among Indians, Mexicans, and negroes suggests quite forcibly that the whole question of racial differences in mental traits will have to be taken up anew and by experimental methods. Children of this group should be segregated in special classes and be given instruction which is concrete and practical. They cannot master, but they can often be made efficient workers, able to look out for themselves. There is no possibility at present of convincing society that they should not be allowed to reproduce, although from a eugenic point of view they constitute a grave problem because of their unusually prolific breeding. (pp. 91-92)”

Eugenics soon became standard education. As well known and many prestigious universities and colleges began to recognize the movement and implement it into their curriculums, the public education system also caught on. With the help of the educational reform, Eugenics was able to spread through the younger population and made its way into everyday life.

Government Laws and Regulations

"Eugenic advocates convinced 30 state legislatures to pass involuntary sterilization laws that targeted "defective strains" within the general population, such as the blind, deaf, epileptic, feebleminded, and paupers. On the national level, eugenic supporters played a decisive role in the Congressional passage of the draconian Immigration and Restriction Act of 1924, which established blatantly racist quotas. President Calvin Coolidge embraced the eugenic assumptions behind the law when he declared, "America must be kept American. Biological laws show É that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races." http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/13_03/eugenic.shtml

Immigration Acts

The Immigration Act of 1924 limited the number of immigrants who could be admitted into the United States from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States as of the 1890 census. They completely excluded immigrants from Asia.

U.S. Department of State

Marriage Laws

"In the early 1900's, the eugenics movement supplied a new set of arguments to support existing restrictions on interracial marriage. These arguments incorporated a "scientific" brand of racism, emphasizing the supposed biological dangers of mixing the races. Influential writers like Madison Grant, a leading eugenicist, warned that racial mixing was "a social and racial crime." He said that acceptance of racial intermarriage would lead America toward "racial suicide" and the eventual disappearance of white civilization. According to Grant, the mixture of "higher racial types," such as Nordic whites, with other "lower" races would inevitably result in the decline of the higher race.

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To prevent further pollution of the country's collective "germ-plasm" and a subsequent contamination of the white race, eugenicists argued for even tighter restrictions against racial mixing. Their efforts focused on new legal definitions of who could qualify to receive a marriage license as a "white" person.

When The Racial Integrity Act became law, it included provisions requiring racial registration certificates and strict definitions of who would qualify as members of the white race. It emphasized the "scientific" basis of race assessment, and the "dysgenic" dangers of race mixing. Its major provision declared: "It shall hereafter be unlawful for any white person in this State to marry any save a white person, or a person with no other admixture of blood than white and American Indian. …the term "white person" shall apply only to such person as has no trace whatever of any blood other than Caucasian; but persons who have one-sixteenth or less of the blood of the American Indian and have no other non-Caucasic blood shall be deemed to be white persons…."" http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/essay7text.html

Steriliaztion Laws

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"Advocacy in favor of sterilization was one of Harry Laughlin’s first major projects at the Eugenics Record Office. In 1914, he published a Model Eugenical Sterilization Law that proposed to authorize sterilization of the "socially inadequate" – people supported in institutions or "maintained wholly or in part by public expense. The law encompassed the "feebleminded, insane, criminalistic, epileptic, inebriate, diseased, blind, deaf; deformed; and dependent" – including "orphans, ne'er-do-wells, tramps, the homeless and paupers." By the time the Model Law was published in 1914, twelve states had enacted sterilization laws.

By 1924, approximately 3,000 people had been involuntarily sterilized in America; the vast majority (2,500) in California. That year Virginia passed a Eugenical Sterilization Act based on Laughlin’s Model Law. It was adopted as part of a cost-saving strategy to relieve the tax burden in a state where public facilities for the "insane" and "feebleminded" had experienced rapid growth. The law was also written to protect physicians who performed sterilizing operations from malpractice lawsuits. Virginia’s law asserted that "heredity plays an important part in the transmission of insanity, idiocy, imbecility, epilepsy and crime…" It focused on "defective persons" whose reproduction represented "a menace to society."" http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/essay7text.html

Eugenics in Popular Culture

Fittest Families Competitions

State fairs were very common throughout the entire country, especially in more rural areas where Eugenic ideas may not have been as well known. With the majority of the U.S. population living in these areas, Eugenicists used state fairs as a venue to promote the Eugenics movement. They established Better Baby Contests, which later transformed into Fitter Family Contests. These exhibitions were founded by Mary Watts and Florence Brown Sherbon. They quickly became popular and were held at numerous state fairs throughout the 1920’s.

These contests, much like today's dog shows, encouraged families to examine their histories as pedigrees subject to scientific control and were open to anyone interested. Contestants submitted an “Abridged Record of Family Traits” and were judged on numerous physical and psychological exams. A team of medical doctors considered the contestants past medical history, examined current physical features including facial characteristics, posture, and habits, as well as any psychological problems. They also considered any special gifts or talents. Each member of the family was then given a grade and the family with the highest average grade was deemed the winner. There were three contests based on family size; large (five or more children), medium, and small (one child). Winners were predominantly white with a northern and western European descent.

Fitter Families Contests reflected the Eugenics movement of the time and became quite popular with the more rural population of the United States. They brought the once urban movement into new areas and became a visible face of Eugenic ideals. These contests encouraged people to embrace new Eugenic ideas and promoted the movement as a scientific way to determine who was better than whom and which families were inherently better than others.

Media Outlets

In the 1930's, people began to associate the declining economic state of the United States with the ongoing genetic decline in the multiethnic population. The Eugenics movement, with the promotion of a more pure race through the many laws and regulations mentioned above, was a way to save the descent of human population. As the movement became increasingly popular, it also started to become more visible in popular media outlets such as magazine articles and numerous films. It was acceptable within the social ideals of the time.

Eugenic doctrines were very widespread throughout popular magazine and newspapers during the 1920's and 1930's. Newspapers like the mainstream Saturday Evening Press as well as others contained numerous ads preaching Eugenic ideas and also included columns from various Eugenic supporters. These middle-of-the-road papers and articles promoted the movement on a more local level and were also able to reach the middle class population as opposed to the selective upper class population of the time.

Many popular films were filled with Eugenic ideas. In 1917 a major motion picture entitled "The Black Stork" came out and contained numerous Eugenic references. The film tells the story of a young couple who was considering marriage. They are warned by a Eugenicist not to have a child. He said that they were unfit and were ill matched to produce offspring. The couple did not listen and had a baby anyway. The Eugenicist was correct in his prediction and the child was born defective and died quickly after birth. This, however is just one of many popular films that promoted the movement throughout the 1920's and 1930's. Well known actress Katherine Hepburn, along with Syndey Fairfield, acted in a film called A Bill of Divorcement, which came out shortly after 1930. This film tells the story of a young woman who called of her engagement, refusing to marry or have children. She does this for fear that she will pass on the genes of her insane father to her children. Her actions can only be understood with the ideals of the Eugenic movement in mind.

Beginnings of the Movement's Downfall

In the later 1930's, as technologies advanced and as Americans became more aware of the Nazi implementation of eugenic practices in World War II, the movement began to steadily decline. Funding for the movement decreased and a growing number of people began to criticize and question many eugenic theories. Eugenicists were accused of misusing scientific and, more specifically, genetic theories for political purposes. In Germany, Adolf Hitler was accused of taking the eugenic movement to the extreme, inexplicably murdering millions based on race and religion.

As quickly as the eugenics movement caught on, it began to fall. A more detailed explanation for the failure of eugenic theories can be found at the link below.

Downfall of Eugenic Policy

Sources

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