The Spread of Eugenics

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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

"Galton's eugenics work occupied the second half of his life. His interest in the habitability of "noble" traits sprang at least partly from the qualities he saw in his own extended Galton-Darwin-Wedgwood family. His first observations were published in Macmillan's Magazine (1865), and his complete thesis was presented in Hereditary Genius (1869). Using information from biographical dictionaries and alumni records at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, Galton investigated the families of notable British judges and statesmen. He concluded that superior intelligence and abilities were inherited with an efficiency of about 20% among primary relatives in these families. He also extended this analysis to "the kindred of the most illustrious Commanders, men of Literature and of Science, Poets, Painters, and Musicians, of whom history speaks.

Only in the last few years of his life did Galton begin to promote eugenics. His lectures at the Royal Anthropological Institute (1901) and at the London School of Economics (1904), as well as his unpublished moral fantasy Kantsaywhere, laid out a vision of eugenics employed for the benefit of a privileged class. He died in 1911, leaving the British movement to emphasize his concept of the voluntary improvement of a family's genetic endowment, which became known as "positive eugenics." http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/static/themes/44.html

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

Many popular figures in the United States supported and advanced the spread of eugenics. Both the Rockefeller and Carnegie Institutions funded programs that spread the eugenics movement both with in the United States and abroad.

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.

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

The following is a picture of an exhibit displayed at a public fair, which 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.

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.”

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.

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/13_03/eugenic.shtml 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

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

frame

"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.

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

State fairs were a 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 rural 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.

These contests reflected the Eugenics movement of the time and were very popular. They brought the movement into rural areas and became a visible face of Eugenic ideals.

http://ibiblio.org/pub/electronic-publications/stay-free/archives/22/eugenics-daniel-kevles.html 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

Many popular films were filled with Eugenic ideas. In 1917 a major motion picture entitles "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. http://books.google.com/books?id=0XrgzEM4CrIC&dq=eugenics+the+black+stork&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=OJbxOSBq0b&sig=24a7KC_2pGwdh8xumsKWQA17Uuk&hl=en&ei=gPweS5fCJ5XVlAe8s8WCDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CA4Q6AEwATgK#v=onepage&q=&f=false