Chapter Seven The Eugenic Hypothesis 1938- 19-40 There is good reason to question the notion of a "new eugenics" as presented by Mark Haller and Kenneth Ludmerer. The idea that the old eugenics "collapsed" and a new leadership had "rebuilt" American eugenics is too simplistic and far too extreme. I have traced the development of particular policies with regard to immigration and sterilization within the American Eugenics Society from its earliest days to 1940. Focusing on those two important issues I have shown that there was a good deal more continuity in policy between 1921 and 1940 than is usually supposed in the literature. I have also looked at the society's leadership from 1923 to 1935. It is quite clear that at least up to 1935 there was very little change in the ideology, philosophy, and leadership of the society. The idea of a "new" eugenics appearing between 1930 and 1940 was not created by Haller and Ludmerer. In the late thirties the AES leadership began to articulate an ideology which they themselves described as new. As we shall see, however, the essentials of the "new" eugenics had clear roots in the older philosophy and the differences have not yet been clearly articulated.! The notion of a "new" eugenics is not entirely without merit. Important changes occurred between 1930 and 1940. In 1934 Charles Davenport retired as Director of the Carnegie Institution's Station for Experimental Evolution at Cold Spring arbor.^ Institutional changes as well took place within the AES beginning in the early thirties with the resignations of Davenport, Howe, Campbell, and others. In 1935 major changes in the institutional structure of the Society were inaugurated with the elimination of the advisory council and the reframing of the constitutional structure of the society. At the end of 1938 control of the ..Eugenical -" " ""..-News ". was transferred from the ERO to the AES.3 By What has been referred to in the literature as the "new eugenics" was not articulated until the late 1930s. A self-conscious expression of this newer philosophy of eugenics is not found in the AES papers or its publications until after 1935. For a full examination of the closing of the Eugenics Record Office see Garland Allen, "The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, 1910-1940: An Essay in Institutional History," 0~~.1.,r..~~.s2nd series, 2: pp. 250- 253. Ml,nu-t.-e-s.,2/9/39. In February 1939 the Board of the American Eugenics Society met to consider policy regarding the N-eewws. It was agreed "that a severe editorial policy be adopted in publishing Eu.wn-i.c.a..!........ N.ee!s.and that definite methods of editorial control be adopted." A11 future material submitted to the Euqen !!!e.w-~ was to be sub ject to review by at least one of the directors of the society, the editorial committee and an outside authority. Scientific material would be stressed, all book reviews would be signed, biographical statements on the contributors be included, and as soon as possible, the society would begin paying for solicited materials. the end of 1939 Harry Laughlin was retired by the Carnegie Institution from the Eugenics Record Office which was subsequently closed down .4 Thus, by 1939 Frederick Osborn's position of leadership within the East Coast eugenics establishment had been consolidated and the center of eugenics activity had clearly transferred from the ERD at Cold Spring Harbor to the AES in New York. Osborn served as one of the Directors of the Society, generally presided at the meetings, and either wrote or supervised the composition of the society's most important platform statements. His 1940 monograph, A Pref,ce.-.." t..~ EEuug..eer!r!i..ccs 9 was cons i the mo st i mpo r t ant statement on eugenics of the period and still stands as the foundation of the "new" eugenics. Between 1937 and 1939, the AES was intensely active. Membership nearly doubled during these years and finances were table.^ The AES organized eight conferences on eugenics in relationship to recreation, nursing, education, medicine, publicity, birth control, housing, and the church AES leaders also participated in fourteen other conferences in which eugenics was included as part of the program.b In January 1940 Laughlin returned to Kirksville, Missouri. Membership was approaching five hundred by 1939. The gross income for 1937-38 was $7,156. The Society maintained two employees. M.inu.t.es 14th Annual Meeting (16 May 1940) P. 2- Recreation held January 37; Nursing, February 1937; Thus, the Society was assiduously engaged in defining its goals in relation to other social issues. A close examination of presentations given by the leadership of the AES during this period will illuminate the essentials of the so-called "new" eugenic^.^ "We are at a major turning point in human biology," Frederick Osborn told his colleagues at the blew York Academy of Medicine in April 1939. Speaking at a lecture in honor of Herman Biggs, Osborn told his audience that "European peoples appear headed for a serious decline." Between 1650 and 1930 Europeans achieved a "seven-fold increase" from one hundred million to seven hundred million at a time when the world population increased only four-fold. However, Osborn explained, for the past one hundred years the trend in the west had been towards a decrease in the number of births per married woman. This trend was most marked in Europe. By 1935 England had a net rate of reproduction which was 24 per cent short of replacement; Germany, France, and Sweden had similar rates.# By 1932, "for the first time in our history, the women of childbearing age in the United States Education, March 1937; Medicine, April 1937; Publicity, December 1937; Birth Control, January 1938; Housing, April, 1938; The Church, May, 1938. ? The material that follows has been taken either from AES pamphlets of the period or from statements by representatives of the Society at AES or other conferences. Frederick Qsborn, "The Significance to Medicine of Present Population Trends," Address before the New York Academy of Medicine, 6 April 1939. p. 5. 273 i were failing to replace their own numbers in the next generation."? The problem was even more serious than the gross numbers indicated. While the western world as a whole was losing ground to non-European populations, reproduction within the the U.S. and Europe was from the worst stocks. More than one-third of the births annually in the U.S. were occurring in families on relief, or with total incomes of less than 9750 per year.I0 Over half of the natural increase was contributed by that third of the population living in the poorest rural areas. In 1930, cities with populations of 25,000 or more inhabitants had an average fertility only 85 per cent of the amount required for replacement. Within each city fertility was highest among the poor, uneducated, and unskilled. "The Nation's new born citizens are somewhat fewer than the number required to maintain a stationary population," said Frank Notestein, a Princeton University demographer, at the PIES Conference on Birth Control, "and they are being recruited heavily from ? Frederick Osborn, "The Significance to Medicine of Present Population Trends," Address before the New York Academy of Medicine, 6 April 1939. See also, P.K. Whelpton, "An Empirical Method of Calculating Future PoP u 1 a t i 0n 9 " Jov. =.a .. 0.f ttth.ee..eee.~.mmerr~..c..caan.nnnnnSstt.a.t.t.I.I.I~.t..i.i.cc.aa1.. Association- A (September 1936) 31 #1?6, pp. 457-473; Frank Notestein, "Some Implication of Current Demographic Trends for Birth Control and Eugenics," Paper presented at the Conference on Eugenics and Birth Control of the American Eugenics Society (28 January 1938) AES Papers. l0 Eric M. Matsner, Medical Director of the American Birth Control League "Birth Control: Future Policies as Evidenced by Present Day Trends," Conference on Eugenics and Birth Control (28 January 1938). ... the most impoverished rural areas of the South and Warren Thompson, Director of Scripps Foundation and a member of the AES Board, summed up the problem at the AES Conference on Eugenics in Relation to Housing: The inverse relation between economic and social status and size of family has been found in practically all studies on this point in the United States of which this writer has knowledge. Unskilled laborers have larger families than skilled workers, and skilled workers have more children than professional and business men....Since there is good reason to believe that a large part of those who are on the borderline between hereditary normality and abnormality, as well as most of the hereditarily defective, are to be found in the lower income classes... it seems fair to assume that the groups whose reproduction is of least benefit to the community have larger families on the average than those who are of sound stock.. 12 Thompson pointed to Swedish studies which indicated that people adjust the size of their families to the size of available housing. He noted therefore, that public housing can have either a eugenic or dysgenic effect on the , population. If, for example, we wish to encourage the professional classes to have larger families the society must insure that adequate housing is available within the l1 Frank W. Notestein, "Some Implications of Current Demographic Trends for Birth Control and Eugenics," Conference on Eugenics and Birth Control of the American Eugenics Society (28 January 1938) p. 2. AES Papers. l2 Warren Thompson, "Housing and Population" Paper presented at the AES Conference on the Eugenic Aspects of Housing.