Imbeciles

by Adam Cohen

  At a Breeders’ Association meeting: American Breeders’ Association, Report of the Meeting Held at Omaha, Nebraska, Dec. 8, 9 and 10, 1909 (Washington, DC: American Breeders’ Association, 1911), 93, quoted in Hassencahl, “Expert Eugenics Agent,” 31.

  Davenport persuaded the Breeders’ Association: Largent, Breeding Contempt, 52–55.

  Davenport published his first major book: Charles Benedict Davenport, Eugenics: The Science of Human Improvement by Better Breeding (New York: Henry Holt, 1910).

  In Eugenics: Davenport, Eugenics, 31, 34; Paul A. Lombardo, Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 31.

  “Vastly more effective”: Davenport, Eugenics, 35.

  Davenport had a connection: Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 54.

  “What is the matter”: William Leuchtenburg, The Supreme Court Reborn: The Constitutional Revolution in the Age of Roosevelt (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 5.

  In his diary: Largent, Breeding Contempt, 56.

  Harriman became the main patron: Allen, “Eugenics Record Office,” 227, 234–35.

  Over the next five years: Hassencahl, “Expert Eugenics Agent,” 68.

  Bell, who was the son: Melvia Nomeland and Ronald Nomeland, The Deaf Community in America: History in the Making (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012), 47.

  In a paper presented: Alexander Graham Bell, “Upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race” (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1884), 41.

  Irving Fisher: “Harriman Philanthropy to Have a Board of Scientific Directors,” New York Times, Mar. 31, 1913; Allen, “Eugenics Record Office,” 238.

  In 1909 he wrote: Irving Fisher, A Report on National Vitality: Its Wastes and Conservation (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1909), 52.

  Davenport also persuaded: “Social Problems Have a Proven Basis of Heredity,” New York Times, Jan. 12, 1913.

  Rockefeller, who was troubled: Theresa Richardson and Donald Fisher, eds. The Development of the Social Sciences in the United States and Canada: The Role of Philanthropy (Stamford, CT: Ablex, 1999), 103.

  An organization affiliated with the bureau: Garland Allen, “The Role of Experts in Scientific Controversy,” in Scientific Controversies: Case Studies in the Resolution and Closure of Disputes in Science and Technology, ed. H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr. and Arthur Caplan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 183–85.

  Davenport wrote to Galton: Fluehr-Lobban, Race and Racism, 118.

  He had been impressed: Allen, “Eugenics Record Office,” 236, 237.

  Davenport offered: Ibid., 226.

  “As rapidly as we can”: Laughlin to Davenport, Sept. 2, 1910, Laughlin folder 2, Davenport Papers.

  Davenport responded a few days later: Davenport to Laughlin, Sept. 6, 1910, Laughlin folder 2, Davenport Papers.

  They moved into the large house: Allen, “Eugenics Record Office,” 238.

  “center for research in human genetics”: Mark Haller, Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in American Thought (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1963), 64; Ruth Engs, The Progressive Era’s Health Reform Movement: A Historical Dictionary (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), 117.

  It was assigned reading: Ann Gibson Winfield, Eugenics and Education in America: Institutionalized Racism and the Implications of History, Ideology, and Memory (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), 69.

  He argued that: Charles Davenport, Heredity in Relation to Eugenics (New York: Henry Holt, 1911), 80–92.

  “When both parents are shiftless”: Ibid., 82.

  America’s earliest immigrants: Ibid., 212.

  Jews had positive attributes: Ibid., 216.

  Davenport began by noting that Italians: Ibid., 217–18.

  Davenport credited the Irish: Ibid., 213–14, 218–19.

  The “great influx of blood”: Ibid., 219.

  It was this national stock of germplasm: Ibid., 221.

  Decades before the Nazis: Hassencahl, “Expert Eugenics Agent,” 30; Sheila Faith Weiss, Race Hygiene and National Efficiency: The Eugenics of Wilhelm Schallmayer (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 197n9; Lombardo, Three Generations, 199.

  In 1907 the Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene: Stefan Kuhl, The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 13.

  The German Society for Racial Hygiene circulated a flyer: Ibid., 15–16.

  Under Laughlin’s leadership: Allen, “Eugenics Record Office,” 238.

  The trainees attended classes: Luis A. Cordon, Freud’s World: An Encyclopedia of His Life and Times (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2012), 109.

  Jane Addams: David Rothman, Conscience and Convenience: The Asylum and Its Alternatives in Progressive America (Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter, 2002), 47.

  Eugenics Record Office trainees: Allen, “Eugenics Record Office,” 243.

  The researchers were also taught practical skills: Cordon, Freud’s World. 108–9.

  The trainees: Allen, “Eugenics Record Office,” 241; Hassencahl, “Expert Eugenics Agent,” 69; Reilly, Surgical Solution, 58; Cordon, Freud’s World. 108–9.

  They were also sent to Ellis Island: Cordon, Freud’s World, 109.

  The data: Reilly, Surgical Solution, 58.

  As part of its “clearinghouse” function: Lombardo, Three Generations, 35.

  An admiring profile: “Social Problems Have Proven Basis of Heredity,” New York Times, Jan. 12, 1913.

  In a report released: Cordon, Freud’s World, 108.

  Pansy Laughlin wrote: Bruinius, Better for All the World, 196. In at least one version of the play, the peddler is not Felix Rosenfeld but Jim Weeks, a “happy-go-lucky peddler”; see http://www.dnalc.org/view/10497--Acquired-or-inherited-A-eugenical-comedy-in-four-acts-play-written-by-P-Laughlin-F-Danielson-and-H-Laughlin.html.

  He also investigated: Hassencahl, “Expert Eugenics Agent,” 69; Allen, “Eugenics Record Office,” 239.

  Committee to Study and to Report on the Best Practical Means: Kenneth Ludmerer, Genetics and American Society: A Historical Appraisal (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), 92.

  Laughlin was named secretary: Ian Robert Dowbiggin, Keeping America Sane: Psychiatry and Eugenics in the United States and Canada, 1880–1940 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 78.

  First National Conference on Race Betterment: Black, War Against the Weak, 88; Bruinius, Better for all the World, 209.

  Kellogg promoted: Black, War Against the Weak, 88.

  “all serious-minded men and women”: J. H. Kellogg, “Needed—A New Human Race,” Michigan Public Health 2, no. 4 (February 1913): 104–5.

  Attendance at the first session: Report of the Secretary, Official Proceedings of the National Conference on Race Betterment (Battle Creek, MI: Race Betterment Foundation, 1914), 1:594–95; Reilly, Surgical Solution, 43.

  There were exhibits: Official Proccedings of the National Conference on Race Betterment, 1:597, 600–602, 606.

  In Laughlin’s presentation: H. H. Laughlin, “Calculations on the Working Out of a Proposed Program of Sterilization,” in ibid., 1:478.

  The “lowest ten percent”: Ibid., 1:480, 485, 486.

  To rid the nation: Ibid., 1:489–90; Lombardo, Three Generations, 48.

  Current sterilization regimens: Laughlin, “Calculations on the Working Out,” 1:490.

  “The shorter the periods”: Ibid., 1:487.

  He argued that the increased expenditures: Ibid., 1:488, 491.

  Laughlin’s American Breeders’ Association report: Eugenics Record Office Bulletin No. 10: Harry H. Laughlin, “The Scope of the Committee’s Work,” in Report of the Committee to Study and to Report on the Best Practical Means of Cutting Off the Defective Germ
-Plasm in the American Population (Cold Spring Harbor, NY: Eugenics Record Office, 1914); Lombardo, Three Generations, 49.

  The report was the most thorough argument: Laughlin, “The Scope of the Committee’s Work,” 16; Mary L. Dudziak, “Oliver Wendell Holmes as a Eugenic Reformer: Rhetoric in the Writing of Constitutional Law,” Iowa Law Review 71 (1986): 846.

  ten defective classes: Laughlin, “The Scope of the Committee’s Work,” 16–57.

  “There must be selection”: Ibid., 57.

  The report put the rate: Ibid., 46, 60.

  Sterilization was also an option: Ibid., 46–47.

  the report was far more skeptical: Laughlin, “Calculations on the Working Out,” 489; Lombardo, Three Generations, 48.

  The report included a second part: Harry H. Laughlin, “The Legal, Legislative and Administrative Aspects of Sterilization,” in Report of the Committee to Study and to Report on the Best Practical Means of Cutting Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the American Population, vol. II, 115–17.

  It recommended sterilization: Ibid., 117, 125.

  “If America is to escape the doom”: Laughlin, “The Scope of the Committee’s Work,” 59.

  With the research he was now conducting: “Biographical Sketches,” box E-1-1:7, Laughlin Papers; Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 102.

  At Davenport’s suggestion: Hassencahl, “Expert Eugenics Agent,” 62.

  Laughlin moved through the doctoral program: Catalogue of Princeton University, 1918–19 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1918), 358–59.

  He studied with Edwin G. Conklin: Bert Bender, Evolution and “the Sex Problem”: American Narratives During the Eclipse of Darwinism (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2004), 225; Hassencahl, “Expert Eugenics Agent,” 62–63.

  Laughlin focused on science: Hassencahl, “Expert Eugenics Agent,” 62; Catalogue of Princeton University, 1918–19, 358–59.

  The Eugenics Record Office launched a new journal: Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 56.

  The Eugenical News: Black, War Against the Weak, 98.

  It published research: Allen, “Eugenics Record Office,” 246.

  In keeping with the views: Black, War Against the Weak, 298; Stefan Kuhl, “The Cooperation of German Racial Hygienists and American Eugenicists Before and After 1933,” in The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined, ed. Michael Berenbaum and Abraham Peck (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 137–38.

  He conducted his research: Hassencahl, “Expert Eugenics Agent,” 63.

  He finally succeeded: Black, War Against the Weak, 159.

  Laughlin used his access: Bureau of the Census, Statistical Directory of State Institutions for the Defective, Dependent, and Delinquent Classes (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1919), 5.

  His work was slowed: Ibid.; Black, War Against the Weak, 160.

  Laughlin would go on: Biological Aspects of Immigration: Hearings Before the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, 66th Cong., 2nd sess., Apr. 16 and 17, 1920, statement of Harry H. Laughlin (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1921), 16–17.

  Madison Grant: Jonathan Peter Spiro, Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant (Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2009), xii, 35.

  He was a cofounder: Winfield, Eugenics and Education in America, 74; Ludmerer, Genetics and American Society, 53.

  The two men even agreed on the percentage: Madison Grant to Charles Davenport, July 6, 1914, Madison Grant folder 1 BD, Davenport Papers.

  Grant was particularly focused: Ibid.

  He was contemptuous: Ibid.

  Grant was also fixated on Polish Jews: Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 152.

  “native American aristocracy”: Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race; or, The Racial Basis of European History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1918), 5.

  divided the people of Europe: Ibid., 19–20, 27; Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 75.

  Grant extolled the Nordic race: Grant, Passing of the Great Race, 27.

  “Races must be kept apart”: Ibid., 222.

  Grant’s proposed responses: Ibid., 50–51.

  The book would later be discovered: Timothy Ryback, Hitler’s Private Library (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), 110; Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 357.

  Laughlin had already been the subject: Reilly, Surgical Solution, 68.

  In his private correspondence with Grant: Harry Laughlin to Madison Grant, Nov. 19, 1932, folder C-2-1:8, Laughlin Papers.

  Laughlin and Grant collaborated: Hassencahl, “Expert Eugenics Agent,” 196–97.

  He reviewed: Allen, “Eugenics Record Office,” 246n51.

  “The wide and continuous”: Harry Laughlin to R. V. Coleman, Nov. 25, 1935, folder C-2-1:8, Laughlin Papers.

  Laughlin was effusive: See Harry Laughlin to Edward B. Greene, Mar. 16, 1937, folder C-2-1:8, Laughlin Papers; Allen, “Eugenics Record Office,” 246.

  In 1900 the foreign-born: Paul S. Boyer and Melvyn Dubofsky, eds., The Oxford Companion to United States History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 362.

  immigration had continued: Black, War Against the Weak, 186.

  Since 1896 Protestants had ceased: Kristofer Allerfeldt, Race, Radicalism, Religion, and Restriction: Immigration in the Pacific Northwest, 1890-1924 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), 34.

  Grant expressed these resentments: Grant, Passing of the Great Race, 81.

  immigration opponents had more specific concerns: Steven G. Koven and Frank Gotzke, American Immigration Policy: Confronting the Nation’s Challenges (New York: Springer, 2010), 30; Boyer and Dubofsky, Oxford Companion to United States History, 361–63.

  immigrants were of inferior genetic stock: Carlson, The Unfit, 257.

  literacy test for immigrants: Koven and Gotzke, American Immigration Policy, 130; Spiro, Defending the Race, 198.

  The Immigration Restriction League: Hassencahl, “Expert Eugenics Agent,” 165.

  immigrants were bringing genetic defects: Reilly, Surgical Solution, 24.

  “The same arguments”: Leila Zenderland, Measuring Minds: Henry Herbert Goddard and the Origins of American Intelligence Testing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 264.

  Hall helped to form: Hassencahl, “Expert Eugenics Agent,” 165.

  Dearborn Independent: Christine Rosen, Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 106.

  Ku Klux Klan: Maldwyn Allen Jones, American Immigration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 236; Wyn Craig Wade, The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 179; Kathleen Arnold, ed., Anti-Immigration in the United States: An Historical Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 311.

  Franz Boas: Carlson, The Unfit, 257; Jeanne Petit, The Men and Women We Want: Gender, Race, and the Progressive Era Literacy Test Debate (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2010), 77.

  Madison Grant attacked Boas: Winfield, Eugenics and Education, 74.

  Albert Johnson: Thomas Gossett, Race: The History of an Idea in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 405–6.

  The main reason: Albert Johnson to W. F. Newel, Mar. 24, 1929, quoted in Hassencahl, “Expert Eugenics Agent,” 205.

  The blond, blue-eyed Johnson: Hassencahl, “Expert Eugenics Agent,” 205.

  an admirer of The Passing of the Great Race: Gossett, Race, 406.

  Grant introduced Johnson to Laughlin: Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 204.

  On April 16 and 17: Biological Aspects of Immigration: Hearings Before the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, statement of Harry H. Laughlin, 3.

  Federal immigration policy: Ibid.

  prospective imm
igrants: Ibid.

  non–northern European immigrants were a problem: Ibid., 17–18.

  Johnson was so pleased: Letterhead, “House of Representatives Committee on Immigration and Naturalization (Sixty-Seventh Congress), Albert Johnson (Wash.), Chairman, Harry H. Laughlin, Expert Eugenics Agent,” box E-1-1:4, Laughlin Papers.

  “the great American watchdog”: Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 204.

  Emergency Immigration Restriction Act of 1921: Patrick J. Hayes, ed., The Making of Modern Immigration: An Encyclopedia of People and Ideas (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2012), 186; Michael LeMay and Elliott Robert Barkan, eds., U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Laws and Issues: A Documentary History (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999) 133.

  The number of immigrants from Europe: Koven and Gotzke, American Immigration Policy, 132.

  In November 1922: An Analysis of America’s Modern Melting Pot, Hearings Before the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, 67th Cong., 3rd sess., Nov. 21, 1922, statement of Harry H. Laughlin (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1923) 725–831.

  Covering the committee room walls: Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 215; Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 103.

  “Making all logical allowances”: Analysis of America’s Modern Melting Pot, statement of Harry H. Laughlin, 755, quoted in Ludmerer, Genetics and American Society, 101.

  “one of the most valuable documents”: Ludmerer, Genetics and American Society, 103.

  Russian immigrants in America: Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 103.

  In March 1924 Laughlin testified: Europe as an Emigrant-Exporting Continent and the United States as an Immigrant-Receiving Nation: Hearings Before the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, 68th Cong., 1st sess., March 8, 1924, statement of Harry H. Laughlin (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1924), 1146 (chart).

  “Immigration is an insidious invasion”: Ibid., 1305.

  serious problems with Laughlin’s data: Stephen Jay Gould, “A Nation of Morons,” New Scientist (May 6, 1982): 351.

  Herbert Spencer Jennings: Herbert S. Jennings, “Undesirable Aliens,” Survey 51 (1923): 311, cited in Ludmerer, Genetics and American Society, 123.

  Joseph Gillman: Gillman, “Statistics and the Immigration Problem,” American Journal of Sociology 30, no. 1 (July 1924): 38.