American Breeders' Association
From Dickinson College Wiki
- Founded in 1903 by agricultural scientists
- members included commercial breeders, professors at agricultural colleges, and researchers at the US Department of Agriculture
- Eugenics Committee founded in 1906 and upgraded to a Section in 1910. Its aim was to promote a better selection of marriage mates and the control of the reproduction of the defective classes. It had a two fold responsibility:
- Oversee the Eugenics Records Office
- Committee work
- This area consisted of five sub-committees that were based on certain eugenic ideas including feeble-mindedness, insanity, epilepsy, criminality, and deafmutism
- These committees were to serve as local centers for collection of data and education and were to exist in connection with universities and other intellectual centers
- Although it had a membership of about 1,000, it avoided major popular campaigns and lobbying
- With the rise of the belief in environmental factors as the main cause of human behavior, the American Breeders' Association slowly shifted its work toward genetics. By 1939, the Eugenics Section had lost influence.
