Eugenics, Pt. 2

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Eugenics, Pt. 2

8.31 Lecture - LPS 60 Review: Eugenicists claim to be supported by which two scientific theories?

Scientific theory Application by Eugenicists

Natural Selection ------> Darwinian Morality (“Might makes right”)

Hard Heredity ------> Genetically-determined Social fitness Review: Eugenicists claim to be supported by which two scientific theories?

Scientific theory Application by Eugenicists

Natural Selection ------> Darwinian Morality (“Might makes right”)

Hard Heredity ------> Genetically-determined Social fitness 1. Darwinian Morality

“One of the effects of civilization is to diminish the rigour of the application of the law of natural selection. It preserves weakly lives that would have perished in barbarous lands.”

“The question was then forced upon me: Could not the race of men be similarly improved? Could not the undesirables be got rid of and the desirables multiplied?”

- Francis Galton, "Hereditary Talent and Character" in MacMillan's Magazine Vol. XII (May - October 1865). London Poster, 1910s 2. Genetically-determined social fitness

The following groups are deemed socially ‘unfit’:

epileptics, depressed, poor (paupers), criminals, alcoholics, blind, deformed, deaf, feeble-minded

Galton (1869) focuses on intelligence.

Laughlin (1922) includes all of these groups and more under the label “socially inadequate”.

London Poster, 1910s “Eugenics...is capable of becoming the most sacred ideal of the human race, as a race; one of the supreme religious duties… Once the full implications of evolutionary biology are grasped, eugenics will inevitably become part of the religion of the future”

- Julian Huxley, Eugenics Review (28:1), 1936

Huxley was a biology professor at King’s College London & the Royal Institution as well as a Fellow of the Royal Society of London; he’s said to be the founder of the “modern evolutionary synthesis”. Some Foundational Scientific Texts

Galton’s Hereditary Genius (1869), Record of Family Faculties (1884)

Dugdale’s The Jukes: A Story in Crime, Pauperism, Disease, and Heredity (1877)

Pearson’s The Groundwork of Eugenics (1909),

Davenport, Heredity in Relation to Eugenics (1911)

Goddard, The Kallikak Family (1912) and Feeble-Mindedness (1914) 3 minutes with your neighbor:

What is an historical example of each of the four legal methods used in the U.S. to enforce negative eugenics? Eugenics Laws

1. Marriage Laws 2. Segregation Laws 3. Sterilization Laws

4. Immigration Laws Eugenics Laws

1. Marriage Laws 2. Segregation Laws 3. Sterilization Laws

4. Immigration Laws 1924 Immigration Act

The 1924 national quotas restricted Jews, Italians, Africans, and outright banned Asians and Arabs.

In 1920, the “Expert Eugenics Agent” of the U.S. House Committee on Immigration & Naturalization, biologist Harry H. Laughlin, testified that the American gene pool was being polluted by a rising tide of intellectually ‘defective’ immigrants as shown by “scientific research” like Goddard’s. Hitler on the U.S. in 1927:

“There is currently one state in which one can observe at least weak beginnings of a [race-based] conception [of citizenship]. This is of course not our exemplary German Republic, but the American Union… The American Union categorically refuses the immigration of physically unhealthy elements, and simply excludes the immigration of certain races. In these respects America already pays obeisance, at least in tentative first steps to the characteristic völkisch conception of the state.”

- Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1927 Institutions U.S.-sanctioned Eugenics 1903 - Willet M. Hays founds American Breeders Association “to study [Mendel’s] laws of breeding and to promote the improvement of plants and animals by the development of expert methods of breeding.”

1906 - Hays (Ast. Sec. of Agriculture) founds the Heredity Commission, an advisory group to Roosevelt. “Race suicide”

In 1905, Roosevelt gave a speech called “On American Motherhood” in which he warned of “race suicide” among Anglo-Saxons. “Race suicide”

In 1905, Roosevelt gave a speech called “On American Motherhood” in which he warned of “race suicide” among Anglo-Saxons.

White women were encouraged to give birth, and birth control came to be seen as unpatriotic. U.S.-sanctioned Eugenics 1903 - Willet M. Hays founds American Breeders Association “to study [Mendel’s] laws of breeding and to promote the improvement of plants and animals by the development of expert methods of breeding.”

1906 - Hays (Ast. Sec. of Agriculture) founds the Heredity Commission, an advisory group to Roosevelt. U.S.-sanctioned Eugenics 1903 - Willet M. Hays founds American Breeders Association “to study [Mendel’s] laws of breeding and to promote the improvement of plants and animals by the development of expert methods of breeding.”

1906 - Hays (Ast. Sec. of Agriculture) founds the Heredity Commission, an advisory group to Roosevelt.

1907 - Heredity Commission adds a Eugenics Section including Charles Davenport, Alexander Graham Bell, and the president of Stanford.

Harry H. Laughlin and Charles Davenport at the ERO in Cold Spring Harbor, NY. U.S.-sanctioned Eugenics 1903 - Willet M. Hays founds American Breeders Association “to study [Mendel’s] laws of breeding and to promote the improvement of plants and animals by the development of expert methods of breeding.”

1906 - Hays (Ast. Sec. of Agriculture) founds the Heredity Commission, an advisory group to Roosevelt.

1907 - Heredity Commission adds a Eugenics Section including Charles Davenport, Alexander Graham Bell, and the president of Stanford.

1910 - Davenport founds the Eugenics Record Office to do the eugenics research for this commission. Harry H. Laughlin and Charles Davenport at the ERO in Cold Spring Harbor, NY. Who is Charles Davenport? Charles Davenport (1866-1944) Harvard Professor of Zoology; 64 scientific societies 1910 - At the Eugenics Record Office he studies inheritance of alcoholism, feeble-mindedness, criminality, intelligence, depression, race crossing 1911 - Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, which becomes a standard college and med school textbook 1912 - Elected to the National Academy of Sciences 1925 - President of Intrntnl Fed. of Eugenics Orgs 1930s - Editor of Nazi scientific journals Eugenics Record Office (1910)

Funded by railroad money and the Carnegie Institute after Roosevelt started his Heredity Commission.

The Eugenics Record Office (1910) was seen as the center of scientific research on eugenics by most scientists until the late 1930s. Collection of Trait Pedigree Records at Eugenics Record Office, NY (1921) (Records on 100,000s of U.S. citizens; Instrumental in passing many sterilization laws.) 1910 Example of Trait Pedigree Record ERO (MSC77, SerI, Box 38, A:3164) Harry H. Laughlin Charles B. Davenport

Field Worker Training Class of 1913 Field Workers would get jobs in state hospitals, colonies, and asylums, but would come back for the Annual Meeting of the ERA Eugenical News was the central journal of the U.S. eugenics movement, 1916-1953 Second International Eugenics Congress, NY, 1921

Hosted by Eugenics Record Office, gave rise to American Eugenics Society American Eugenics Society

Founded 1922 after Second International Congress on Eugenics in New York.

Harry H. Laughlin, president of AES American Eugenics Society

Founded 1922 after Second International Congress on Eugenics in New York.

Publisher of many books and journals, placed displays at State Fairs, awarded prizes for best eugenics sermons; main advocate for eugenics laws in the U.S.

Letter from Field Secretary, American Eugenics Society to Fair Associations asking education exhibit space State Fair Display in Philadelphia State-sanctioned Eugenics State-sanctioned Eugenics State-sanctioned Eugenics Model Eugenical Sterilization Law

The American Eugenics Society president published a book in 1922, Eugenical Sterilization in the U.S.

Harry H. Laughlin

“The Pope and Eugenics: A Reply to the Encyclical”

by Roswell H. Johnson, eugenicist, Human Betterment Foundation, 1931 1907: Roosevelt’s Heredity Commission 1910: Eugenics Record Office, NY 1921: International Eugenics Congress, NY 1922: American Eugenics Society 1928: Human Betterment Foundation, CA Eugenics Journals

1. Eugenical News (1916-1953; began with ERO, moved to AES in 1922) 2. Eugenics, A Journal of Race Betterment (1928-1931) 3. Eugenics Quarterly (1954-1970) 4. Eugenics Review (1909-1914) 5. Bibliographica Eugenica (1927-1934) State-sanctioned Eugenics 1. Roosevelt’s Heredity Commission (1907)

Willet M. Hays (Ast. Sec. of Agriculture; president of American Breeders’ Association) founds this eugenics advisory group.

In 1907, Charles B. Davenport and many others join the group.

In 1910, Carnegie Institute founds the Eugenics Record Office, where Davenport can do the research for this commission.

2. “Expert Eugenics Agent” for the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization

1921-1931 - Harry H. Laughlin, a top figure at the American Eugenics Society and Eugenics Record Office, is given this title. U.S. Laws Eugenics Laws

1. Marriage Laws 2. Segregation Laws 3. Sterilization Laws

4. Immigration Laws Eugenics Laws

1. Marriage Laws 2. Segregation Laws 3. Sterilization Laws

4. Immigration Laws Eugenical Marriage Laws Eugenical Marriage Laws

In 1896, Connecticut banned marriage for people who were “epileptic, imbecile, or feeble-minded… when the woman is under forty-five years of age.” Eugenical Marriage Laws

In 1896, Connecticut banned marriage for people who were “epileptic, imbecile, or feeble-minded… when the woman is under forty-five years of age.”

By 1914, more than 20 states had this law. Eugenical Marriage Laws

In 1896, Connecticut banned marriage for people who were “epileptic, imbecile, or feeble-minded… when the woman is under forty-five years of age.”

By 1914, more than 20 states had this law.

In 1924, Virginia passed the Racial Integrity Act, banned marriage between whites and ‘colored’ (defined by the ‘one-drop rule’). It was modeled on Laughlin’s “Model Eugenical Sterilization Law” (1922). Eugenical Marriage Laws

In 1896, Connecticut banned marriage for people who were “epileptic, imbecile, or feeble-minded… when the woman is under forty-five years of age.”

By 1914, more than 20 states had this law.

In 1896, Connecticut banned marriage for people who were “epileptic, imbecile, or feeble-minded… when the woman is under forty-five years of age.”

By 1914, more than 20 states had this law.

By 1931, Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma had this law, and a dozen other states adopted the one-drop rule. In 2001, Virginia apologized for this eugenics-based law ...but most anti-miscegenation laws predated eugenics

Anti-miscegenation laws by state California Civil Code (1850-1948):

"no license may be issued authorizing the marriage of a white person with a Negro, mulatto, Mongolian or member of the Malay race" -Sect.69 Eugenics Laws

1. Marriage Laws 2. Segregation Laws 3. Sterilization Laws

4. Immigration Laws “No law against marriage will take the place of compulsory segregation of gross defectives.”

- Charles Davenport, 1913 “The proper action in the case of imbeciles or the gross epileptics who wish to marry is not to decline to give them a marriage license, but to place them in an institution under State care during at least the entire reproductive period.”

- Charles Davenport, 1913 Virginia State Colony for Epileptics authorized by a 1906 eugenicist bill; In 1914, “feeble-minded” were admitted Eugenics Laws

1. Marriage Laws 2. Segregation Laws 3. Sterilization Laws

4. Immigration Laws Sterilization

Institutionalization was too expensive. Sterilization

Institutionalization was too expensive.

In the 1920s, the American Eugenics Society calculated that $25,000 was spent on segregating the original Jukes for life, but sterilizing the initial Jukes would have cost less than $150 Model Eugenical Sterilization Law

The American Eugenics Society president published a book in 1922, Eugenical Sterilization in the U.S.

Laughlin, with a doctorate in cell biology from Princeton, was also the Superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office.

Chapter 15 of this book was titled “Model Eugenical Sterilization Law”.

Eighteen states modeled their sterilization laws off of it over the next two decades. Harry H. Laughlin “The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.”

“Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

-Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Buck v Bell (1927) U.S. Eugenics

By 1909, California and two other states, had passed sterilization laws.

By 1940, California had sterilized 20,000 individuals. Nazis Hitler on U.S. Sterilization “I have studied with great interest the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would be, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock. ...the possible excess and error [i.e., the one-drop rule] is still no proof of the incorrectness of these laws.” - c. 1930 German Eugenics Laws

1933: Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring

● sterilized 400,000 ● based on Laughlin’s “Model Eugenical Sterilization Law” ● Nazis consulted the California policy makers in particular (e.g. Popenoe).

U.S. Eugenicists were proud: “To one versed in the history of eugenics in America, the text reads almost like the American model sterilization law.” - Eugenic News (1933, p 89), published by American Eugenics Society “We do not stand alone” (1936) “The Germans are beating us at our own game.”

- Joseph S. DeJarnette, part of Virginia sterilization movement, director of Western State Hospital (c.1935)

“I must say that my impression is, from a close following of the situation in the German scientific press, rather favorable.”

- Paul Popenoe in 1934 on the 1933 Nazi law, head of the Human Betterment Foundation & the California section of the American Eugenics Society German Eugenics Laws

1933: Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring

1935: Nuremberg Laws ● Barred Jewish-German marriages based on U.S. marriage laws Nazi propaganda slide of a Hitler Youth educational presentation entitled "Germany Overcomes Jewry" (1933) German Eugenics Laws

1933: Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring

1935: Nuremberg Laws ● Barred Jewish-German marriages based on U.S. marriage laws ● Second-class citizenship to Jews, inspired by U.S. citizenship laws for Filipinos, Puerto Ricans, and Native Americans ● The resulting immigration restrictions based on U.S. Immigration Act of 1924 German Eugenics Laws

1933: Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring

1935: Nuremberg Laws

1939: Aktion T-4 programme ● Genocide of 70,000 mentally and physically disabled

“60,000 Reichsmark is what this person suffering from a hereditary defect costs the People's community during his lifetime. Fellow citizen, that is your money too.” German Eugenics Laws

1933: Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring

1935: Nuremberg Laws

1939: Aktion T-4 programme

1942: Final Solution to the Jewish Question ● Genocide of over 6 million Jews Other countries

Japan: National Eugenic Law (1940-1945): 454 cases of sterilization

Sweden: Sterilization (1934-1976): 21,000 forcibly sterilized, 93% were women

Canada: Sexual Sterilization Act (1928-1972): 2,800 cases of forced sterilization

Australia: Between 1905 and 1980, 1 in 3 Aboriginal children were taken from their families by the government to “breed out the color”.