These politicians had tapped into a common thread in American history—fear of immigrants. Whether the rejection of mostly Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe in the 1930s and 1940s or, when compared with Canada and other countries, the woeful rate of acceptance of Syrian immigrants today, America has often been slow to open its doors.
What most Americans had failed to realize, however, was that these successful appeals to our worst prejudices had their roots in a scientific treatise published a century ago. The author was a New York City conservationist named Madison Grant.
—
IT STARTED WITH PEA PLANTS.
In 1866, a dyspeptic, curmudgeonly, Augustine monk working in Brno, Moravia, published a scientific paper in the Proceedings of the Natural History Society of Brünn. No one noticed. The monk’s name was Gregor Mendel, and the subject was peas. Mendel wondered what would happen if he crossed a tall pea plant with a short one. Would the offspring be tall, short, or something in between? And what about pea plants with wrinkled pods or smooth pods or with green leaves or yellow leaves? What he found surprised him; there was no in between. Progeny were either tall or short; pods were wrinkled or smooth; and flowers were green or yellow. Traits never blended; rather, certain traits seemed to dominate. Tall was dominant over short, wrinkled over smooth, and green over yellow. Mendel didn’t base his conclusions on a handful of plants or a few years of study; he had worked for more than a decade and performed thousands of cross-fertilizations. At the end of his paper, Mendel proposed that his peas were inheriting one “factor” from each parent. Today we call these “factors” genes.
Despite popular belief, Gregor Mendel didn’t discover heredity. At the time of his publication, people knew that cows could be bred to produce more milk or chickens to produce more eggs or horses to produce more wins at the racetrack. What they didn’t know was why. Because of Gregor Mendel, people could now predict whether an animal would express a particular physical trait. Mendel had moved animal breeding into the realm of computational biology.
A few years after Mendel published his paper, a British scientist named Francis Galton, who was a half cousin of Charles Darwin, made the leap from peas to people and from physical traits to something far more meaningful. If we could breed better animals, reasoned Galton, couldn’t we breed better people, too? Wouldn’t traits like intelligence, loyalty, bravery, and honesty also be inherited? And wouldn’t selecting for better people make for a better world? A world free of drunkenness, violence, and poverty. A world where the lower classes could be bred out of existence, no longer a burden to society.
In 1869, Francis Galton published Hereditary Genius, outlining his plans for a better tomorrow. Galton argued that the British government should issue certificates of fitness to worthy young men and women and offer money for every child produced. And it wouldn’t be expensive. Galton believed that if British citizens were willing to spend “only one-twentieth of the cost spent for the improvement of the human race that is spent on the improvement of the breed of horses and cattle, what a galaxy of geniuses might we not create!” He called his plan eugenics, from the Greek for “well born.”
But there was a darker side. “I do not, of course, propose to neglect the sick, the feeble or the unfortunate,” wrote Galton, “but I would exact an equivalent for the charitable assistance they receive by preventing the more faulty members of the flock from breeding.” Galton argued that lunatics, criminals, and paupers should be placed in monasteries and convents “for the purpose of restricting their opportunities for producing low-class offspring.” Breeding had become weeding.
—
IN THE EARLY 1900s, eugenics crossed the ocean and landed in a small cove near Huntington, New York. Here, on the beaches of Long Island, America’s eugenics movement took hold. The man who championed Galton’s cause was Charles Davenport, an accredited member of America’s academic elite. The son of a long line of English and colonial New England Congregationalist ministers, Davenport had received his doctorate in zoology from Harvard before teaching at the University of Chicago. In 1904, he was appointed director of the Station for Experimental Study of Evolution at Cold Spring Harbor.
Charles Davenport worshipped Francis Galton. “As [society] claims the right to deprive the murderer of his life,” said Davenport, “so also it may annihilate the hideous serpent of hopelessly vicious protoplasm.” Davenport argued that the cost of taking care of America’s defective citizens was about $100 million a year. It was time to do something about it. So he created the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, keeping careful tabs on those who were worthy and those who weren’t. A few years later, he plucked Harry Laughlin out of a desolate, one-room schoolhouse in Livonia, Missouri, and appointed him superintendent. Davenport would be the researcher (supplying scientific “evidence” to support their cause), and Laughlin would be the lobbyist persuading those in power to pass laws to eliminate this lesser breed of citizens).
—
IN OCTOBER 1910, the Eugenics Record Office opened for business. Its mission was clear: Determine which Americans were of inferior stock and prevent them from marrying or having children. The first step was to confine them to unisex institutions for those deemed insane or feebleminded. And later to sterilize those who were still roaming free.
Determining who would be targeted wasn’t going to be easy. Davenport asked his team of field workers to create family trees for unwanted traits that, according to him, lay “hidden in records of our 42 institutions for the feebleminded, our 115 schools and homes for the deaf and the blind, our 350 hospitals for the insane, our 1,200 refuge homes, our 1,300 prisons, our 1,500 hospitals, and our 2,500 almshouses.” Davenport’s plan included not only those who were unfit, but also those who had someone in their family who might have been unfit. He needed to eliminate their bloodline from America’s gene pool. No stone could be left unturned. To store his valuable data, he built a fireproof vault.
As a first order of business, Davenport and Laughlin published their top ten list of “degenerate protoplasm”: (1) the feebleminded; (2) the poor; (3) alcoholics; (4) criminals; (5) epileptics; (6) the insane; (7) the “constitutionally weak”; (8) those suffering from venereal diseases; (9) the deformed; and (10) the deaf, blind, or mute. (No attempt was made to distinguish those with blurry vision from those who were blind or those with bad hearing from those who were deaf.) Davenport and Laughlin calculated that their program would include about a million Americans currently in the state’s care, three million who weren’t in the state’s care, and seven million family members. These 11 million people—according to the Eugenics Record Office—represented the bottom tenth of the U.S. population. The time had come to prevent them from reproducing.
Davenport and Laughlin could easily determine who was a criminal from jail records; who was blind or deaf from eye and ear examinations; and who had venereal diseases from hospital and clinic records. But how were they going to accurately determine who was feebleminded? Fortunately, a European researcher had made the task a lot easier.
—
IN THE EARLY 1900s, a French psychologist named Alfred Binet created an intelligence test. A few years later, the test was modified by a Stanford researcher and renamed the Stanford-Binet test. Now the eugenicists had a hard and fast number they could rely on: 70. They determined that anyone with an intelligence quotient (or IQ) score of less than 70 was unfit for procreation. To celebrate the moment, they created a new word: “moron,” from the Greek moros meaning “stupid” or “foolish.” Not everyone was celebrating. Walter Lippmann, a syndicated columnist, wrote in the New Republic that the IQ test represented “a new chance for quackery in a field where quacks breed like rabbits.” Most Americans, however, were excited about the chance to eliminate the least among them. And the IQ test was clear and objective, a good place to start. Lippmann’s comments were ignored.
Eugenicists had completely bastardized Mendel’s laws. Although it was true that physical characteristic
s like eye color could be mapped to single genes, such was not the case with traits like criminality, alcoholism, epilepsy, deafness, or susceptibility to venereal diseases. Not everything could be accounted for by strict Mendelian genetics. Nonetheless, the false notion that selective breeding could make for a better society would soon allow Americans to cloak some of their worst prejudices in the gilded robes of science.
—
IN RETROSPECT, given the absurdity of eugenics and its goals, one could only imagine that its pursuit would have been relegated to underfunded cranks working without public or mainstream scientific support. In fact, the opposite was true.
From its inception, the Eugenics Research Office had an advisory board that read like a who’s who of academic royalty. The list included Alexis Carrel, a Nobel Prize–winning surgeon from the Rockefeller Institute; William Welch, a world-renowned pathologist from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and future president of the American Medical Association; Stewart Paton, a psychiatrist from Princeton University; Irving Fisher, a public affairs professor from Yale University; James Field, a political economist from the University of Chicago; and three professors from Harvard—physiologist W. B. Cannon, immigration expert Robert DeCourcy Ward, and neuropathologist E. E. Southard.
And, far from being underfunded, the Eugenics Record Office was awash in funds, having been awarded tens of millions of dollars from the Carnegie Foundation (steel), the Rockefeller Institute (oil), Mrs. E. H. Harriman (rail), and George Eastman (photography). The State Department, the Army, and the Departments of Agriculture and Labor also supported Davenport and Laughlin.
In addition, eugenics was embraced by some of the world’s most prominent, most influential, and most respected citizens.
David Starr Jordan, the president of Indiana University and founding president of Stanford University, was the first academic to popularize eugenics in his book, Blood of the Nation.
Alexander Graham Bell, who had invented the telephone and performed pioneering research in hearing loss, prepared a form used by eugenicists to document deafness.
H. G. Wells, the British novelist best known for his books The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds, wrote, “We want fewer and better children…and we cannot make the social life and the world peace we are determined to make with the ill-bred, ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens that [have been] inflict[ed] upon us.”
Margaret Sanger, the founder of the American Birth Control League, tirelessly promoted a union between a woman’s right to choose and eugenics. As a nurse, Sanger had been sickened by the inability of the poor to prevent unwanted births. She argued that birth control would allow for “more children from the fit and less from the unfit.” It was time, Sanger said, for “human weeds to be extirpated.”
John Harvey Kellogg, who operated a health sanatorium that offered fanciful foods for the wealthy, founded the Race Betterment Foundation of Battle Creek, Michigan. Eight years after he invented the cornflake, Kellogg said, “We have wonderful new races of horses, cows, and pigs. Why should we not have a new and improved race of men? A race of human thoroughbreds.” Espousing a common belief of his time, Kellogg said that those destined for abnormality had been “begotten in lust.”
George Bernard Shaw, an Irish playwright and a founder of the London School of Economics, also embraced eugenics. The author of more than 60 plays, Shaw was probably best known for Pygmalion, which was later made into the musical My Fair Lady. Shaw is the only person to have won both a Nobel Prize in literature and an Academy Award. Despite his socialist leanings, Shaw wholly supported eliminating the underclass: “There is now no reasonable excuse for refusing to face the fact that nothing but a eugenic religion can save our civilization from the fate that has overtaken all previous civilizations.” So much for Eliza Doolittle.
Theodore Roosevelt also weighed in. On January 3, 1913, Roosevelt sent a letter to Charles Davenport. “Some day,” he wrote, “we will realize that the prime duty of the good citizen of the right type is to leave his or her blood behind him in the world; and that we have no business to permit the perpetuation of citizens of the wrong type.”
Although Pope Pius XI would later speak out against eugenics, most American clergy backed the efforts of the Eugenics Record Office, citing Matthew 7:16: “Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles?” Dr. Albert Wiggam, an author and leading member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, also believed that eugenics was divine. “Had Jesus been among us,” said Wiggam, “He would have been president of the First Eugenic Congress.”
—
THE ZEALOUS EFFORTS of Davenport and Laughlin shaped a nation.
By 1928, about 400 colleges and universities in the United States offered courses in eugenics, and 70 percent of all high school biology textbooks embraced the pseudoscience. Eugenicists sponsored “Fitter Families” competitions and traveled to state fairs, Kiwanis conventions, PTA meetings, museums, and movie theaters. One exhibit, titled “Some People Are Born to Be a Burden on the Rest,” featured a series of blinking lights. One light, which flashed every 48 seconds, indicated the birth of a “defective person”; another, which flashed every 50 seconds, indicated that someone had just been sent to jail and that “very few normal people ever go to jail”; a third, which flashed only every 7 minutes, indicated the birth of a “high-grade person.” The exhibit explained that “every 15 seconds $100 of your money goes for the care of persons with bad heredity.”
With the support of wealthy philanthropists, influential citizens, and respected academics, the eugenics movement in the United States changed the law. Four states prohibited the marriage of alcoholics, 17 prohibited the marriage of epileptics, and 41 prohibited the marriage of those deemed feebleminded or insane. By the mid-1930s, America was the world leader in banned marriages. (Marriage restriction laws weren’t declared unconstitutional until 1967.)
—
WITH AMERICANS TAKING THE LEAD, eugenics became an international phenomenon.
In 1912, the First International Congress of Eugenics took place in London. Alexander Graham Bell was the honorary president. Scientists from the United States, Belgium, England, France, Italy, Japan, Spain, Norway, and Germany attended. Nine years later, the Second International Congress of Eugenics was held in New York City. A prominent American eugenicist named Henry Fairfield Osborn gave the keynote address. “As science has enlightened government in the prevention and spread of disease,” he said, “it must also enlighten government in the prevention of the spread and multiplication of worthless members of society.” Of the 53 papers presented at the meeting, 42 were from American researchers. Despite its international appeal, eugenics was an American science.
In 1917, eugenics entered the popular culture with the release of the Hollywood movie Black Stork. Promoted as a “eugenics love story,” the movie featured a “defective” child who was allowed to die. The message of Black Stork, and the advertisements promoting it, were clear: Kill the defectives, save the nation. The movie played to enthusiastic audiences for more than a decade.
With the popularity of Black Stork and the support of lawmakers, American citizens were ready to take the next step—to legislate forced sterilization. These procedures had the blessing not only of the medical and scientific communities, but also eventually of the United States Supreme Court. Eugenicists argued that the country would need to sterilize the lower 10 percent of the population and to continue to sterilize the lower 10 percent until the gene pool was pure. Their initial goal was to sterilize 14 million Americans. When the dust settled, 65,370 poor, syphilitic, feebleminded, insane, alcoholic, deformed, lawbreaking, or epileptic Americans in 32 states had been sterilized. California alone was responsible for more than 20,000 of them. Few, if any, Americans rose in protest. It was one of the darkest moments in American history.
Most of those sterilized didn’t understand what was being done, surprised that they could no longer bear children later in life. Some were told
they were having a different surgical procedure. (Because of its popularity in the South, sterilizations were often referred to as “Mississippi appendectomies.”) Others were told to sign a form that they couldn’t read. In 1927, civil libertarians were delighted when the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of a woman who was being sterilized against her will. At last, the most disenfranchised members of society would have their day in court. The person who was being sterilized was Carrie Buck. The doctor who was to perform the sterilization was John Bell. The case, one of the most famous in the history of American jurisprudence, was called Buck v. Bell.
—
ON JULY 3, 1906, Frank and Emma Buck gave birth to a daughter, Carrie. When Frank deserted the family, Emma turned to prostitution. On April 1, 1920, Emma was forced to admit to a eugenics commission that she was a prostitute who had contracted syphilis. As a consequence, she was sent to the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded in Lynchburg, where she would remain for the rest of her life. Carrie, who was three years old at the time, was sent to a foster home. All through elementary school Carrie showed herself to be an enthusiastic and able student; nonetheless, her foster parents took her out of school in the sixth grade to help with chores around the house. Later, she was lent out to other homes to help with their chores.
When Carrie Buck was 16, Clarence Garland, the nephew of her foster parents, raped her. Within a few months it was clear that she was pregnant. “He promised me that we would get married,” said Carrie, “but we didn’t.” On January 23, 1924, embarrassed by the scandal, Carrie’s foster parents had her committed to the colony in Lynchburg. Two months later, Carrie gave birth to a little girl, Vivian. While at Lynchburg, Carrie was given the Stanford-Binet test to determine whether she was subject to Virginia’s new sterilization law. (Given its principal use, the Stanford-Binet intelligence test should have been called the Stanford-Binet feeblemindedness test.) Although Carrie was 17, she was said to function at the level of a 9-year-old and was labeled a moron.
Pandora's Lab Page 9