by Edwin Black
A continent-wide war ignited before Europe’s eyes. The Belgian planning session was cancelled, and the Second International Congress of Eugenics was postponed. While Europe fought, and indeed even after the United States entered the war, America continued its domestic eugenic program and held its place as the world leader in eugenic research, theory and activism.4
When the war ended four years later, international eugenics reorganized, with America retaining its leadership. The Second International Congress of Eugenics was rescheduled for September 1921, still in New York, under the auspices of the Washington-based National Research Council, the administrative arm of America’s prestigious, Congressionally-chartered National Academy of Sciences. The National Academy of Sciences functioned as a way of uniting America’s disparate scientific establishments. As it had for the first congress, the State Department mailed the invitations around the world. Although the National Research Council was the official authorizing body, Davenport wrote his colleagues that it was “up to the New York group to put this Congress through.”5
The “New York group” was led by Laughlin, Mrs. Harriman and Madison Grant, author of The Passing of the Great Race. In addition to being among the world’s leading raceologists, Grant was a trustee for the American Museum of Natural History. The museum became the titular sponsor of the second congress. The museum’s premises were used for the congress’s meetings and exhibits, its staff helped with the details, and its president, Henry Osborn, a eugenicist himself, was named president of the international gathering. The museum’s name was prominently displayed on the published proceedings, as though the congress were just another museum function.6 All of this imbued the event with a distinctly evolutionary and anthropological quality. This was exactly the intent of congress organizers. They wanted the event to be seen as a milestone in the natural history of the human species.
The second congress was rich with typical raceological dogma and dominated by American biological precepts. Alexander Graham Bell assumed the honorary presidency. The proceedings were divided into four sections: comparative heredity, the human family, racial differences and “Eugenics and the State.” Delegates from every continent attended to share eugenic principles and to form legislative game plans they could take back home. Osborn’s opening address represented a challenge from America. “In certain parts of Europe,” he set forth, “the worst elements of society have gained the ascendancy and threaten the destruction of the best.” He recognized that “To each of the countries of the world, racial betterment presents a different aspect…. Let each… consider its own problems…. “ But in the final analysis it came down to one mandate: “As science has enlightened government in the prevention and spread of disease, it must also enlighten government in the prevention of the spread and multiplication of worthless members of society…. “7
Osborn also repeated the standard eugenic idea: “The true spirit of American democracy that all men are born with equal rights and duties has been confused with the political sophistry that all men are born with equal character and ability to govern themselves.… “8
Not only was the rhetoric American, but so was the science. Out of fifty-three scientific papers, all but twelve were produced by American eugenicists on American issues, all conforming to the Carnegie Institution’s sociopolitical strategies. Topics included Indiana’s Tribe of Ishmael, Kentucky’s mountain people and Lucien Howe’s proposals on hereditary blindness.9
Some European eugenicists complained about America’s domination of the global congress. Sweden’s Hermann Lundborg, for example, railed to Davenport in a rambling handwritten missive that America was trying to hijack the worldwide movement. “I have been hoodwinked…. By what right do you in America usurp the words Second International, when the Congress is not international. It is an injustice which not only I, but I believe the majority of my [Swedish] section do not approve Of.”10
Such protests did not deter Davenport and his colleagues. Indeed, in a special presentation on the essence of eugenic research, Davenport explained his dedication. “Why do we investigate?” he asked. “Alas! We have now too little precise knowledge in any field of eugenics. We can command respect for our eugenic conclusions only as our findings are based on rigid proof…. “ Davenport reminded the delegates that wealthy American benpfactors had made the critical difference between mere ideas and hard data. “It is largely due to the extraordinary vision of Mrs. E. H. Harriman, the founder of the Eugenics Record Office, that in this country, eugenics is more a subject of research than [mere] propaganda.”11
Money made the difference for the international convention as well. Mrs. Harriman donated an extra $2,500 to fund the more than 120 exhibits erected throughout the museum. These included a prominent exhibit on sterilization statutes in the United States. The Carnegie Institution extended a special grant of $2,000 to defray travel expenses for several of the key European speakers, and to cover general expenses for the delegates. Other wealthy eugenicists contributed significant sums and were named patrons of the gathering. They included sanitarium owner John Kellogg, working through his Race Betterment Foundation, and YMCA benefactor and prominent political contributor Cleveland H. Dodge.12
In recalling the congress some weeks later for the Indiana Academy of Science, Carnegie researcher Arthur Estabrook quoted Osborn: “That all men are born with equal rights and duties has been confused with the political sophistry that all men are born with equal character and ability to govern themselves…. “13
During the congress Davenport orchestrated the renaming and broadening of the International Eugenics Committee into a Permanent International Commission on Eugenics. This renamed entity would sanction all eugenic organizations in “cooperating” member countries, which now included Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Germany was not included because it refused to sit on the same panel with its World War I enemies Belgium and France. Germany was also struggling under the punitive terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which made international eugenic cooperation difficult.14
Multinational eugenics gathered momentum during the next two years. In October of 1922, the Permanent International Commission assembled in Brussels. The meeting was once again steered by Davenport and his circle. Representatives from Belgium, Denmark, Great Britain, France, the Netherlands and Norway began coordinating their efforts. The commission resolved to learn more about eugenic campaigns in India and Japan, and also voted unanimously to invite Germany back into its ranks.15
In September of 1923, Laughlin kicked off his first European immigration tour by attending the Permanent International Commission meeting in Lund, Sweden. Preparations for this meeting prevented Laughlin from sailing to Europe in July with Secretary of Labor James Davis. At the Lund meeting, Laughlin advanced most of the motions that the commission adopted.16
The 1923 meeting proved a watershed event for the movement. The group ratified the four-point “Ultimate Program” devised by the American Eugenics Society, calling for each nation to undertake research, education, administrative measures and “conservative legislation” within its borders. And although it welcomed news of their efforts, the commission stopped short of extending membership to Japan and India.17
To keep the eugenic directorate truly elite, commission rules permitted no more than three representatives of each cooperating country to be empanelled. Davenport and Laughlin sat at the apex of this group. All commission members were dedicated to the American-espoused belief in Nordic supremacy, a sentiment which was also growing in Germany. Yet Germany was still not a full participant on the commission. Although Germany was willing to rejoin the group, German race scientists told commissioners that Germany still “could not cooperate with representatives of certain nations.” In personal correspondence, German eugenicists specified whom they meant: the French.18 Commission leaders s
aid they would wait.
During the next two years, with Germany still in the periphery, Davenport and Laughlin were able to extend U.S. domination of the commission’s scope, science, and political agenda. Resolutions were binding on the dozen or so members, committing them to pursue the agreed-upon legislative and scientific strategies. Because of this, policy developed on Long Island leapt across the ocean directly into the capitals of other nations.19
For example, in 1925 Davenport introduced a resolution based on Laughlin’s strategy of investigating immigrant families and screening them for eugenical fitness. Likening human beings to farm animals, Davenport’s resolution read: “Whereas every nation has a right to select those who shall be included in its body politic, and whereas some knowledge of both family history and past personal performance are as essential a part of the information about a human immigrant and potential parent, as about an imported horse or cow, therefore [be it] resolved that each immigrant-receiving country may properly enquire into the family and personal history of each immigrant.”20 Commission members, working through scientific and intellectual societies back home, then pressured for changes in immigration regulations along these lines.
Worldwide uniformity was important to Davenport. To push usage of the ERO’s standard family pedigree form in all countries, Davenport issued a message: “Members are reminded that a standardized form of pedigree was worked out by the Federation and has been widely published in most countries.” He also asked all cooperating national societies to lobby for national registration and census schemes similar to models already developed by his colleagues in Norway and Holland. Davenport tempered his worldwide eugenic mandates by assuring he would “avoid anything which might savour of interference in national affairs,” adding, “nevertheless, it is clear that in certain directions, such work might be usefully undertaken.”21
By 1925, the commission was comprised not just of individuals, but also of constituent eugenic societies and institutions. Hence it was time to adopt another new name, the International Federation of Eugenic Organizations (lFEO). The new name was meant to further extend the organization’s scope, and also reflected Davenport and Laughlin’s desire to energize and standardize the movements in many countries. Ultimately, uniformity of eugenic action was written into IFEO membership rules. As president of the IFEO, Davenport issued a memorandum to member societies restating the federation’s goals: “To endeavor to secure some measure of uniformity in the methods of research, and also sufficient uniformity in the form of presentation of results to make international work of worldwide use. To endeavor to promote measures tending to eugenic progress, whether international or national, on comparable lines.”22
Even though Davenport was an influential steering force, federation members were independent thinkers. They advanced their own substantial legislative and scientific contributions for consideration by the federation. The Nordic countries of Scandinavia were especially active in this regard. Indeed, Europe’s northwestern nations were the most receptive to eugenics. Predominantly Catholic countries were the most resistant. Whether resistant or receptive, however, each country’s eugenics movement developed its own literature in its own language, its own racial and genetic societies, its own raceological personalities and its own homegrown agenda. Nonetheless, the movement’s fundamental principles were American and shepherded by Americans. Many foreign eugenicists traveled to America for training at Cold Spring Harbor and to attend meetings, congresses and conferences. As the epicenter of eugenics, and by virtue of its domination of the IFEO, American eugenic imperialism was able to take root throughout Europe and indeed the world.23
Belgium’s Societe Belge d’Eugenique was organized in 1919. The Belgian Eugenics Society announced in Eugenical News that it was “fully awake to the needs of the time in connection with preservation of the race. Its leaders realize that the safeguarding of public health through hygienic measures is not sufficient, but that due attention must be paid to the prevention of the transmission of hereditary traits that would be injurious to the race.” The new society’s nine sections included ones for social hygiene, documentation and legislation. Within two years, the Belgian Eugenics Society launched its own journal, which the ERO at Cold Spring Harbor quickly declared to be of “high order.”24
Dr. Albert Govaerts led the Belgian movement. He was allied with Laughlin from the beginning. After the second international congress in New York in 1921, Govaerts stayed on and traveled to Cold Spring Harbor for a term of study, which was funded by a fellowship from America’s post-war Commission for Relief in Belgium Educational Foundation.25
Govaerts’s work at the ERO concentrated on hereditary tuberculosis studies, and his research was published in the American Review of Tuberculosis in 1922. After Govaerts returned to Belgium, his original tables and calculations remained on file at the ERO. By early 1922, Govaerts’s Belgian Eugenics Society had installed eugenic lectures and courses at the University of Brussels. They also succeeded in garnering recognition of the budding science from the Belgian government. Later in 1922, a government-supported National Office of Eugenics opened in Brussels at the distinguished Solvay Institute. The National Office of Eugenics trained eugenic field workers and operated as a Belgian version of the ERO.26
Laughlin and Govaerts often worked as a team. Laughlin used Govaerts’s office as a headquarters during his 1923 sojourn throughout Europe as a Congressional immigration agent, and he even stayed in his home when visiting Brussels. Eugenicists never secured sterilization laws in Belgium, but Govaerts boasted of his lobbying efforts for a “eugenical prenuptial examination” to be required of all marriage applicants. Eugenical News reported that Govaerts “very graciously states that Belgian eugenicists are deeply indebted to the Eugenics Record Office for the service rendered in aiding the Belgian society to establish its new office.”27
In Canada, eugenic passions became inflamed over many issues, including the birth rate of French Canadians. But perhaps no debate was more heated than the one prompted by problems associated with immigrant groups. Hard-working Asian and European immigrants flowed into Canada throughout the 1890s as the country’s infrastructure expanded. In 1905, Ontario carried out its first census of the feebleminded. Shortly after Indiana passed its 1907 sterilization law, Ontario’s Provincial Inspector of Hospitals and Public Charities argued that Rentoul’s concepts could end the hereditary production of tramps, prostitutes and other immoral characters. Another Canadian physician pointed to the example of a Chicago doctor who advocated asexualization.28
By 1910, Canada’s British-American Medical Association was studying the sterilization laws in California and Indiana. Similar legislation proposed in Ontario and Manitoba did not succeed. But the movement for human breeding and sterilization of the unfit continued. The first Canadian sterilization law was passed by Alberta’s legislature in 1928. Alberta’s Sexual Sterilization Act targeted mental defectives who “risk… multiplication of [their] evil by transmission of [their] disability to progeny.” Alberta’s Eugenics Board authorized the sterilization of four hundred people in its first nine years. In 1937, certain safeguards were eliminated by the new Social Credit government, and the door was opened to forced sterilization. Until the law was repealed in 1972, of some 4,700 applications, 2,822 surgeries were actually authorized. The majority of Alberta’s sterilized were young women under the age of twenty-five, many under the age of sixteen. Following the example of America’s hunt for mongrels, Alberta disproportionately sterilized French-Canadian Catholics, Indians and Metis (individuals of mixed French-Canadian and Indian descent). Indians and Metis constituted just 2.5 percent of Canada’s population, but in later years represented 25 percent of Alberta’s sterilized.29
British Columbia passed its own law in 1933, creating a three-person Eugenics Board comprised of a judge, a psychiatrist and a social worker. Because records were lost or destroyed, no one will ever know exactly how many were sterilized in British Columbia, although o
ne study discussed the fates of over fifty women who had undergone the operation.30
In Switzerland, the eminent psychiatrist and sexologist Dr. Auguste Forel was a leading disciple of eugenics beginning in 1910. He was also a proponent of U.S.-style sterilization laws. The wealthy industrialist Julius Klaus was another early advocate, endorsing eugenic registers to identify Switzerland’s unfit. When he died in 1920, Klaus bequeathed more than a million Swiss francs, or about $4.4 million in modern money, to establish a fund for Swiss eugenic investigations and related advocacy. Klaus’s will specifically forbade using the fund for charitable works to “ameliorate the condition of physical and mental defectives.”31
Swiss eugenic scientists were suddenly endowed. The anthropologist Otto Schlaginhaufen became director of the Zurich-based Julius Klaus Foundation for Heredity Research, Social Anthropology and Racial Hygiene as well as the Institution for Race Biology. These organizations were dedicated to “the promotion of all scientifically based efforts, whose ultimate goal is… to improve the white race.” In 1923, Schlaginhaufen and Forel, now fully funded, ascended to the Permanent International Eugenics Commission.32
Swiss eugenics focused on the exclusion of certain ethnic groups, as well as Forel’s notion of sexology, that is, the study of sexual behavior, especially as it related to women. Forel believed women wished to be and should be “conquered, mastered and subjugated” to fulfill their national reproductive duty. In 1928, Switzerland’s first sterilization law was passed in Canton Vaud, where Forel practiced. It targeted a vaguely-defined “unfit.” Only Vaud passed such a law, but physicians across the country performed sterilizations for both medical and eugenical reasons. Although the extent of Swiss sterilizations remains unknown, one scholar ascertained that some 90 percent of the operations were conducted on women.33
In Denmark, eugenics was organized by two of Davenport’s earliest confederates, August Wimmer and Soren Hansen. Wimmer was a psychiatrist at the University of Copenhagen, and Hansen was president of the Danish Anthropological Committee. As Nordic raceologists seeking to stamp out defective strains within an already eugenically elite country, their affiliation with Davenport was natural. One Danish physician even traveled to the Vineland Training School in New Jersey to study under H. H. Goddard, whose texts on the Kallikaks and revision of the Binet-Simon test became standard in Danish eugenical publications. Although resistant at first, in 1912 the government launched a massive eugenical registration of deaf-mutes, the feebleminded and other defectives. It was not until a decade later that the first eugenic marriage restriction law was adopted. So-called “therapeutic sterilization” was common, but compulsory sterilization would not be legalized until 1929.34