The Spread of Eugenics

The Early History of Eugenics

Sir Francis Galton

"The English mathematician Sir Francis Galton first coined the term in 1883. He wrote, "Eugenics is the study of the agencies under social control that seek to improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally."1 What Galton saw as a new branch of scientific inquiry became a dogmatic prescription in the ranking and ordering of human worth. His ideas found their most receptive audience at the turn of the century in the United States." http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/13_03/eugenic.shtml

Popularization of Eugenics in the United States

"It was out of this cauldron of social upheaval that the American eugenics movement emerged. It promised prosperity and progress, not through strikes or ugly race riots, but through a new science that would combine advances in the field of genetics with the efficiency of the assembly line. " http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/13_03/eugenic.shtml

http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/list2.pl

Eugenic Education

Lectures

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

Literature

"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

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.”

Schooling

"Under the banner of educational reform, the American eugenics movement captured the hearts and minds of some of the nation's most influential educational researchers and policy makers." http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/13_03/eugenic.shtml

"Eugenic ideology worked its way into the educational reform movements of the 1910s and 20s, playing a key role in teacher training, curriculum development, and school organization. It also provided the guiding ideology behind the first IQ tests. Those tests were used to track students into separate and unequal education courses, establish the first gifted and talented programs, and promote the idea that educational standards could be measured through single-numbered scores. Eugenic ideas about the intellectual worth of students penetrated deeply into the fabric of American education.

Eugenics was a common feature in college curricula. Universities "offering courses in eugenics increased from 44 in 1914 to 376 in 1928."4 A recent analysis of 41 high school biology textbooks used through the 1940s revealed that nearly 90% of them had sections on eugenics.5 Major figures in education were attracted to eugenics and wrote books for teachers and the general public. Eugenics became a top-down model of "education reform" for these educators. A cadre of university experts trained in the latest testing methods and embracing eugenic principles believed they could make schooling a more efficient enterprise. Schools would be the place where students both learned basic eugenic principles and also were tracked into their future roles as dictated by their biological worth." http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/13_03/eugenic.shtml

"The Eugenics movement quickly became standard education in high school Biology and College. By 1928, the American Genetics Association boasted that there were 376 college courses devoted exclusively to eugenics. High-school biology textbooks followed suit by the mid-1930s, with most containing material favorable to the idea of eugenical control of reproduction. It would thus have been difficult to be an even moderately educated reader in the 1920s or 1930s and not have known, at least in general terms, about the claims of eugenics." http://www.accd.edu/sac/honors/main/papers02/Judge.htm

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

Marriage Laws

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"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 – also known as miscegenation. 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. 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

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Eugenics in Popular Culture

Fittest Families Competitions

"Not unlike dog shows today, Fitter Family contests pitted American citizens against one another in a battle to determine whose facial characteristics, posture, health, and habits judges deemed the most fit. The winners were usually Aryans who, if not Christian themselves, could pass as models of godly living--which isn't to suggest that the contests were strictly a rural phenomenon. Fitter Family and similar contests were popular throughout the U.S., a visible face of a long-burgeoning movement that was quickly coming to a head: eugenics." http://ibiblio.org/pub/electronic-publications/stay-free/archives/22/eugenics-daniel-kevles.html

"When one considers the strong contribution of agricultural breeding to the eugenics movement, it is not difficult to see why eugenicists used state fairs as a venue for popular education. A majority of Americans were still living in rural areas during the first several decades of the 20th century, and fairs were major cultural events. Farmers brought their products of selective breeding — fat pigs, speedy horses, and large pumpkins — to the fair to be judged. Why not judge "human stock" to select the most eugenically fit family?

This was exactly the concept behind Fitter Families for Future Firesides — known simply as Fitter Families Contests. The contests were founded by Mary T. Watts and Florence Brown Sherbon — two pioneers of the Baby Health Examination movement, which sprang from a "Better Baby" contest at the 1911 Iowa State Fair and spread to 40 states before World War I. The first Fitter Family Contest was held at the Kansas State Free Fair in 1920. With support from the American Eugenics Society's Committee on Popular Education, the contests were held at numerous fairs throughout the United States during the 1920s.

At most contests, competitors submitted an "Abridged Record of Family Traits," and a team of medical doctors performed psychological and physical exams on family members. Each family member was given an overall letter grade of eugenic health, and the family with the highest grade average was awarded a silver trophy. Trophies were typically awarded in three family categories: small (1 child), medium (2-4 children), and large (5 or more children).

All contestants with a B+ or better received bronze medals bearing the inscription, "Yea, I have a goodly heritage." Childless couples were eligible for prizes in contests held in some states. As expected, the Fitter Families Contest mirrored the eugenics movement itself; winners were invariably White with western and northern European heritage." http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/list2.pl

Media Outlets

"Eugenics doctrines were widespread in mainstream magazines like The Saturday Evening Post and newspapers. The people who organized eugenics activities on a local level were the solid middle class of their communities" http://ibiblio.org/pub/electronic-publications/stay-free/archives/22/eugenics-daniel-kevles.html