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“Melting Pot Or Dumping Ground?”: Racial Discourse in American Science, Magazines, and Textbooks in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

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“Melting Pot Or Dumping Ground?”: Racial Discourse in American Science, Magazines, and Textbooks in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries “MELTING POT OR DUMPING GROUND?”: RACIAL DISCOURSE IN AMERICAN SCIENCE, MAGAZINES, AND TEXTBOOKS IN THE LATE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURIES A thesis submitted To Kent State University in partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Emily L. Wicks May, 2012 Thesis written by Emily Wicks B.A., University of Pittsburgh, 2010 M.A., Kent State University, 2012 Approved by _______________________________, Kenneth J. Bindas, Advisor _______________________________, Kenneth J. Bindas, Chair, Department of History _______________________________, Timothy Moerland, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences ii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES………..…..……………………..…………………………………..iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………………………........vi INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………..…….1 CHAPTER ONE Language of Fear: Scientific Studies of Race and Ethnicity in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Centuries United States…………………………………………………........15 CHAPTER TWO “The Stranger within our Gates”: The Portrayal of Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration in Popular Progressive Era Periodicals……………………………………….……….........65 CHAPTER THREE The Gatekeepers of Racial Hierarchy: The Discourse in Progressive Era Textbooks……………………………………………………………………………….118 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………181 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………........188 iii LIST OF FIGURES Figures 1.1. “The Ignorant Vote-Honors are Easy”…..……....……………...…………………...16 1.2. A distribution of European races according to Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race ………...………………………………………………………………...26 1.3. “Percentage Distribution of Letter Grades”...…….…………………………………36 1.4. Eugenics tree logo…..…...……....…………………………………………………..43 1.5. “Heart and Minds”…….......………………………………………………………...62 2.1. Image from the 1903 Century article entitled “What Shall We Be?”……....….…...72 2.2. Image from the 1921 Outlook article entitled “A Greenhorn at the Gate”…..…......93 2.3. Image from the 1907 Outlook article entitled “The Gateway of the Nation”.……...94 2.4. “Hereditary Types”…………………………………………………………………95 2.5. “Profitable Benevolence”…....……………………………………………………...96 2.6. “Admiration”…....……...…………………………………………………………...97 2.7. “The Chinaman at Bat”……………….......………………………………………...99 2.8. “100% Impure”...……....………………………………………………………….100 2.9. “Look Out for the Undertow!”…………………....……………………………….101 3.1. Map of distribution of races from M.F. Maury’s Physical Geography…...............122 3.2. Pictures of the various races from Charles Dryer’s Lessons in Physical Geography........................................................................................................................123 3.3. A page from Charles Dryer’s Lessons in Physical Geography……...…………....139 iv 3.4. Image of the “Black race” from Jacques Redway’s Elementary Physical Geography........................................................................................................................153 3.5. A Comparison of races from H. Justin Roddy’s Elementary Geography.................158 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Completion of this thesis would not have occurred without the support and guidance of numerous people. My deepest appreciation is to my advisor, Dr. Kenneth Bindas, Chair of Kent State University Department of History. He has helped me throughout the entire project, from discussing possible thesis topics to editing numerous drafts. He encouraged me to develop my ideas into a cohesive project and taught me how to effectively and confidently express my argument through writing. Anytime I became overwhelmed, discussing my topic with him allowed me to remember the overall purpose of my work. Without his meticulous editing and guidance, this thesis would not have been completed. In addition to Dr. Bindas, I would like to thank my committee members, Dr. Clarence Wunderlin and Dr. Elizabeth Smith-Pryor, both of the Kent State University Department of History, for lending me their expertise and advice throughout this process. On a more personal level, I would like to thank my colleagues in Bowman 205, who were there for me during the ups and downs of my graduate career. Specifically, I would like to thank Colleen Benoit, Ilya Braverman, Sarah Žabić, and Jeffrey O'Leary for supporting me all along. I could not have made it through these two years without all of you, as you helped me through coursework and kept me sane! In addition, I would like to thank my family and friends who listened to me vent and allowed me to discuss my ideas with them. In particular, my deepest gratitude is to my mother and father who are still vi my biggest supporters. My father's love of history was instilled in me at a young age and motivated me to follow this path. With my mother's heirloom of an old textbook, my thesis topic was able to come alive. This thesis was possible because of their love and support. vii INTRODUCTION During the Progressive Era, white American citizens felt their values and morals were being challenged by a changing American society that created a sense of anxiety. They feared their way of life was being undermined economically, politically, and by racial minorities who they perceived as threatening to overrun and ruin their white American society and culture.1 Journalist George Creel, in a 1921 Collier’s article, questioned whether America was a “Melting Pot or Dumping Ground” for "inferior" races, thus reflecting a national anxiety over the future of American racial purity.2 In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, increased scientific research concerning race and ethnicity only furthered the fear of “inferior” African American and immigrant traditions, characteristics, and beliefs degrading white American society. Psychologist and president of the American Psychological Association Robert Yerkes, in the foreword to A Study of American Intelligence by Princeton University professor of psychology Carl 1 As Matthew Frye Jacobson points out, the idea of race, ethnicity, and whiteness is fluid, and at different times, varying racial categories were employed. When referencing descriptions of racial categories, this thesis uses terms as they were meant during the Progressive era, but I recognize that today they hold a tone of prejudice. While these categories are cultural constructions, these were the terms used during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and therefore need to be referenced in this discussion. In the study of ethnicity during this period, narrower distinctions of “whiteness” are apparent. Therefore, for this work, when I refer to the American white middle class, I am referring to those who are “native” to America (meaning born in the United States) or whose ancestry is traced to those groups deemed “superior” such as Anglo-Saxons or Nordics. Immigrant groups deemed “inferior” are referred to as “Alpine,” “Mediterranean” or by nationality. African Americans were part of the “Negro” race, and seen as the lowest segment of the racial hierarchy; see Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 6-12. 2 George Creel, “Melting Pot or Dumping Ground?,” Collier’s, September 3, 1921, 9. 1 2 C. Brigham, told readers that Brigham’s analysis of intelligence testing of various races was “a notable service to psychology, to sociology, and above all to our law-makers.” To Yerkes and other scholars, Brigham’s conclusions of the mental inferiority of immigrants and African Americans were “not theories or opinions but facts.” Yerkes warned readers, “[N]o one of us as a citizen can afford to ignore the menace of race deterioration or the evident relations of immigration to national progress and welfare.”3 Similarly, scholar and eugenicist Lothrop Stoddard in his work, The Revolt against Civilization, emphasized the importance of “scientific” studies of race, arguing the “grim blight of civilized society has been correctly diagnosed only in recent years” due to “momentous biological discoveries.” With these “discoveries,” Stoddard, like Yerkes, urged that “all political and social problems need to be re-examined.”4 To Stoddard and other concerned white citizens, one of the biggest social problems was the threat African Americans and immigrants posed to the "superior" white “Nordic” race. Stoddard argued, “Racial impoverishment is the plague of civilization. This insidious disease, with its twin symptoms the extirpation of superior strains and the multiplication of inferiors, has ravaged humanity like a consuming fire, reducing the proudest societies to charred and squalid ruin.” In a time when the white American identity was being challenged by the movement of immigrants and African Americans, “scientific” theories arose to prove that 3 Robert Yerkes, foreword to A Study of American Intelligence, by Carl C. Brigham (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1923), vii-viii. 4 Lothrop Stoddard, preface to The Revolt against Civilization: The Menace of the Under Man (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1922). 3 white Americans should fear inferior races as “a deadly menace both to civilization and the [White] race.”5 This thesis will examine the Progressive Era United States racial discourse to understand how existing racial theories were strengthened by members of the intelligentsia, permeated through popular culture, and served as a focal point in school textbooks. The rapid increase in immigration from southern and eastern Europe and the Great Migration north by southern American blacks exposed tensions
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