Eugenics in America by Anne Legge

Torch Magazine • Fall 2018 Eugenics in America By Anne Legge In his wonderfully written D. Rockefeller, Alexander Graham book The Gene: An Intimate Bell, and Supreme Court Justice History, Pulitzer prize-winning Oliver Wendell Holmes. Not author Siddhartha Mukherjee himself a hard-core eugenicist, characterizes eugenics as a Charles Darwin acknowledged the “flirtation with the perfectibility need for altruism and aid for our of man” (12). An ingredient of weaker brothers and sisters, but the Progressive Movement in hard-core geneticists embraced the United States from 1890 to the thinking of Social Darwinism, The late Anne Legge was a retired 1930, eugenics was a response to questioning even vaccination and associate professor of English from Lord Fairfax Community College, the stresses of the time including philanthropy as factors that enable Middletown, Virginia. industrialization, immigration, the weaker to survive. and urbanization. Eugenics came She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the College of William and in two varieties: positive eugenics Eugenics was inherently racist, Mary, where she was student encouraged breeding of desirable based on a belief in the superiority body president. She also earned a stock, and negative eugenics of Nordic stock and on preserving graduate degree from the University of Virginia. prevented reproduction of the unfit the purity of the “germ-plasm,” the (Cohen 47). The problem is who eugenicists’ term for the inheritance A member of the Winchester Torch decides who is “fit,” and by what package carried by individuals. The Club since 1983, she served as club president (1986-87) and received the criteria. By its very nature, eugenics national stock of germ-plasm was Silver Torch Award in 2001. She was was elitist and paternalistic. the eugenicists’ primary concern. a two-time recipient of the Charles Seeing the unhealthy and unfit as Greeb Best Paper Award. The father of eugenics was the a burden on society, eugenicists “Eugenics in America” was originally British scientist Francis Galton, argued that improvements to the presented to the Winchester club on a cousin and contemporary of environment—housing, nutrition, March 1, 2017. Charles Darwin. Galton coined education, medical care—would the word “eugenics” from the not solve society’s problems but Greek words for “good” and only foster the survival of the unfit. “genes,” as well as originating the phrase “nature versus nurture” Although eugenics claimed to (Mukherjee 65-67). The intention be science-based, it could more of eugenicists was to use the accurately be called science- newly re-discovered Mendelian exploiting. In the classic debate laws of heredity to improve the of nature versus nurture, opinion human race. The movement in the first part of the 20th century became part of the zeitgeist of the favored the hereditary nature of day, the elite of science, politics, all disorders, physical defects, and education being proponents, and problem behaviors, including including Woodrow Wilson, eye defects, physical deformities, Theodore Roosevelt, Margaret dwarfism, deafness, epilepsy, Sanger, Andrew Carnegie, John feeble-mindedness (a favorite 24 Torch Magazine • Fall 2018 catch-all category), schizophrenia, educational exhibits and contests to do eugenic research. Other manic depression, insanity, for Better Babies and Fitter adherents were Edwin Alderman, tuberculosis, syphilis, even Families alongside cattle, pig, and president of the University of vagrancy, pauperism, criminality, sheep judging, with ribbons and Virginia; Harvey Jordan, dean and immorality. One serious cash prizes awarded to the winners. of the UVA medical school; and problem with the eugenicists’ A staff of examiners screened the Joseph DeJarnette, superintendent conclusions was that the science of contestants covering hereditary, of Western State Hospital in the day was woefully inadequate social, and educational attainments Staunton, Virginia. in understanding mental illness, and mental and physical status epilepsy, intelligence testing, (Cohen 61). Between 1890 and At the First National and the principles of inheritance. 1930, almost everyone who Conference on Race Betterment, Another problem was that few traits was anyone was a eugenicist in held in Battle Creek, Michigan, are purely hereditary. Mukherjee sympathy if not in practice. There in 1914, Laughlin quantified the explains, “Most genes react with were few dissenting voices except problem: “To rid the nation of what other triggers—environment, for the Catholic Church (Cohen he [Laughlin] called the ‘lowest chance, behaviors, or even parental 67). one-tenth’ of the population would and prenatal exposures—to require fifteen million people to determine an organism’s form and be sterilized over the next two function” (454). The eugenicists By 1931, 28 of generations. There had so far been had a kind of hubristic confidence fewer than one thousand eugenic that they knew exactly how to the 48 states sterilizations, he said, and that was master nature. Galton stated, “What not nearly enough” (Cohen 118-19). nature does blindly and ruthlessly, had legalized The policy Laughlin recommended man may do providently, quickly, might be irreverently called “catch and kindly” (qtd. In Mukherjee eugenic and release”: identify defectives, 72). institutionalize them, sterilize sterilization. them, and release them to return * * * to normal life. He continued, “If One of the founding fathers of America is to escape the doom of The eugenics movement American eugenics was Charles nations generally, it must breed advocated three courses of Davenport, a Harvard-educated good Americans. The fall of every action: education, segregation biologist interested in scientific nation in history has been due to and sterilization, and immigration breeding of livestock and dogs many causes, but always chiefest reform. Eugenicists published with an organization called the among these causes has been the articles and books, created college American Breeders Association, decline of the national stock” (qtd. and high school texts and courses, which soon extended its focus in Cohen 121). and held international conferences to human breeding. In 1904 attended by scientists, physicians, Davenport founded the Station The drive to enact sterilization and such notables as Winston for the Experimental Study of laws began in Indiana in 1907, Churchill, Harvard President Evolution in Cold Spring Harbor, quickly spreading throughout the Charles Eliot, and eminent New York. Davenport recruited nation. By 1931, 28 of the 48 states physician William Osler, as well eugenicist Harry Laughlin, and the had legalized eugenic sterilization as a delegation from Germany, Cold Spring Harbor facility became (Cohen 306). An important center who gave a presentation on what the Eugenics Record Office. of eugenic activity was the Virginia they termed “Racial Hygiene.” Funded by Andrew Carnegie and Colony for Feeble-Minded and American eugenicists even took other wealthy patrons, it collected Epileptics in Amherst County, their agenda to state fairs; the histories and pedigrees, developed Virginia, superintended by Dr. Kansas Free Fair of 1929 included manuals, and trained field workers Alfred Priddy, and characterized by 25 Torch Magazine • Fall 2018 Mukherjee as “the Hotel California deterioration on both sides” (qtd. journalists, and ultimately certain of mental illness: patients who in Cohen 134). In 1923, a Saturday ethnic groups. It was a steep and checked in rarely ever left” (79). Evening Post editorial endorsed slippery slope from sterilization Patients at such institutions Laughlin’s testimony: “If America to occasional euthanasia to were routinely sterilized by doesn’t keep out the queer, alien, extermination of six million Jews salpingectomy (surgical removal mongrelized people of Southern in the Holocaust. of a fallopian tube) for women or and Eastern Europe, her crop of vasectomy for men, often without citizens will eventually be dwarfed * * * the patient’s knowledge or consent. and mongrelized in turn” (Cohen The paperwork recorded that the 134). In 1929, Harry Laughlin showed procedures were necessary because Congress a chart of nationalities of appendicitis or pelvic disease. ranked by intelligence, a chart After the Nazis based on data from U.S. Army While the threat to racial testing. The verbal skills testing purity from within was addressed seized power was administered at Ellis Island to by segregating and sterilizing the immigrants who had just endured a “unfit” and by miscegenation laws in 1933, their trans-Atlantic voyage in steerage, in Virginia and other states, the had limited English literacy, and external threat was addressed by sterilization laws may have never before held a immigration reform in response pencil. Needless to say, most of to a surge of ten million white were modeled them tested very badly. The history immigrants from 1890 to 1924. of intelligence testing is bound Mainly Jewish, Italian, Irish, and after American up with the eugenics movement Polish, this population was said to because IQ tests were the tools be carrying defective germ-plasm precedents. for identifying the “incompetents” (Mukherjee 82), while the stock among the native stock as well as deemed desirable was Nordic Congress responded by among immigrants. To pursue this from such countries as Germany, passing the extremely stringent fascinating subject, you cannot do Scandinavia, Scotland, and Immigration Act of 1924. better than Stephen Jay Gould’s England.

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