War Against the Weak
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Almost a million ERO records assembled on individuals and families were “unsatisfactory for the scientific study of human genetics,” the advisory committee explained, “because so large a percentage of the questions concern… traits, such as ‘self-respect,’ ‘holding a grudge,’ ‘loyalty,’ [and] ‘sense of humor,’ which can seldom truly be known to anyone outside an individual’s close associates; and which will hardly ever be honestly recorded, even were they measurable, by an associate or by the individual concerned.”20
While much ERO attention was devoted to meaningless personality traits, key physical traits were being recorded so sloppily by “untrained persons” and “casually interested individuals” that the advisory committee concluded this data was also “relatively worthless for genetic study.” The bottom line: a million index cards, some 35,000 files, and innumerable other records merely occupied “a great amount of the small space available… and, worst of all, they do not appear to us really to permit satisfactory use of the data.”21
The advisory committee recommended that all genealogical and eugenic tracking activities cease, and that the cards be placed in storage until whatever bits of legitimate heredity data they contained could be properly extracted and analyzed using an IBM punch card system. A million index cards had accumulated during some two decades, but because of the project’s starting date in 1910 and Laughlin’s unscientific methodology, the data had never been analyzed by IBM’s data processing system. This fact only solidified the advisory committee’s conclusion that the Eugenics Record Office was engaged in mere biological gossip backed up by reams of worthless documents. The advisory committee doubted that the demographic muddle would “ever be of value,” and added its hope that “never again… should records be allowed to bank up to such an extent that they cannot be kept currently analyzed.”22
The advisory committee vigorously urged that “The Eugenics Record Office should engage in no new undertaking; and that all current activities should be discontinued save for Dr. Laughlin’s work in preparation of his final report upon the Race Horse investigation.” Moreover, the advisory committee emphasized, “The Eugenics Record Office should devote its entire energies to pure research divorced from all forms of propaganda and the urging or sponsoring of programs for social reform or race betterment such as sterilization, birth-control, inculcation of race or national consciousness, restriction of immigration, etc. Hence it might be well for the personnel of the Office to discontinue connection with the Eugenical News.” Committee members concluded, “Eugenics is by generally accepted definition and understanding not a science.” They insisted that any further involvement with Cold Spring Harbor be devoid of the word eugenics and instead gravitate to the word genetics.23
Geneticist L. C. Dunn, a member of the advisory committee traveling in Europe at the time, added his opinion in a July 3,1935, letter, openly copied to Laughlin. Dunn was part of a growing school of geneticists demanding a clean break between eugenics and genetics. “With genetics,” advised Dunn, “its relations have always been close, although there have been distinct signs of cleavage in recent years, chiefly due to the feeling on the part of many geneticists that eugenical research was not always activated by purely disinterested scientific motives, but was influenced by social and political considerations tending to bring about too rapid application of incompletely proved theses. In the United States its [the eugenics movement’s] relations with medicine have never been close, the applications having more often been made through sociology than through medicine, although the basic problems involved are biological and medical ones. “24
Dunn wondered if it wasn’t time to shut down Cold Spring Harbor altogether and move the operation to a university where such an operation could collaborate with other disciplines. “There would seem to me to be no peculiar advantages in the Cold Spring Harbor location.” As it stood, “‘Eugenics’ has come to mean an effort to foster a program of social improvement rather than an effort to discover facts.” In that regard, Dunn made a clear comparison to Nazi excesses. “I have just observed in Germany,” he wrote, “some of the consequences of reversing the order as between program and discovery. The incomplete knowledge of today, much of it based on a theory of the state, which has been influenced by the racial, class and religious prejudices of the group in power, has been embalmed in law, and the avenues to improvement in the techniques of improving the population have been completely closed.”25
Dunn’s July 3 letter continued with even more pointed comparisons to Nazi Germany. “The genealogical record offices have become powerful agencies of the [German] state,” he wrote, “and medical judgments even when possible, appear to be subservient to political purposes. Apart from the injustices in individual cases, and the loss of personal liberty, the solution of the whole eugenic problem by fiat eliminates any rational solution by free competition of ideas and evidence. Scientific progress in general seems to have a very dark future. Although much of this is due to the dictatorship, it seems to illustrate the dangers which all programs run which are not continually responsive to new knowledge, and should certainly strengthen the resolve which we generally have in the U.S. to keep all agencies which contribute to such questions as free as possible from commitment to fixed programs.”26.
Carnegie’s advisory committee could not have been more clear: eugenics was a dangerous sham, the ERO was a worthless and expensive undertaking devoid of scientific value, and Laughlin was purely political. But as Hitler rose and the situation of the Jews in Europe worsened, and the plight of refugees seeking entry into the United States became ever more desperate, the Carnegie Institution elected to ignore its own findings about Cold Spring Harbor and continue its economic and political support for Laughlin and his enterprises. Shortly after Merriam reviewed the advisory committee’s conclusions, the Reich passed the Nuremberg Laws in September of 1935. Those of Jewish ancestry were stripped of their civil rights. Laughlin, Eugenical News and the Cold Spring Harbor eugenics establishment propagandized that the laws were merely sound science. Eugenical News even gave senior Nazi leaders a platform to justify their decrees. The Carnegie Institution still took no action against its Cold Spring Harbor enterprise.
In 1936, the brutal Nazi concentration camps multiplied. Systematic Jewish pauperization accelerated. Jews continued fleeing Germany in terror, seeking entry anywhere. But American consulates refused them visas. In the face of the humanitarian crisis, Laughlin continued to advise the State Department and Congress to enforce stiff eugenic immigration barriers against Jews and other desperate refugees. The Carnegie Institution still took no action against its Cold Spring Harbor enterprise.27
In 1937, Nazi street violence escalated and Germany increasingly vowed to extend its master race to all of Europe-and to completely cleanse the continent of Jews. Laughlin, Eugenical News and the eugenics establishment continued to agitate in support of the Reich’s goals and methods, and even distributed the anti-Semitic Nazi film, Erbkrank. The Carnegie Institution still took no action against its Cold Spring Harbor enterprise.28
In 1938, as hundreds of thousands of new refugees appeared, an emergency intergovernmental conference was convened at Evian, France. It was fruitless. Germany then decreed that all Jewish property was to be registered, a prelude to comprehensive liquidation and seizure. In November, Kristallnacht shocked the world. Nazi agitation was now spreading into every country in Europe. Austria had been absorbed into the Reich. Hitler threatened to devour other neighboring countries as well. Laughlin, Eugenical News and the eugenics establishment still applauded the Hitler campaign. By the end of 1938, however, the Carnegie Institution realized it could not delay action much longer.29
On January 4, 1939, newly installed Carnegie president Vannevar Bush put Laughlin on notice that while his salary for the year was assured, Bush was not sure how much funding the ERO would receive-if any. At the same time, Jews from across Europe continued to flee the Continent, many begging to enter America because no oth
er nation would take them. In March of 1939, the Senate Immigration Committee asked Bush if Laughlin could appear for another round of testimony to support restrictive “remedial legislation.” Bush permitted Laughlin to appear, and only asked him to limit his unsupportable scientific assertions. But Laughlin was not prohibited from again promoting eugenic and racial barriers as the best basis for immigration policy. Indeed, the Carnegie president reminded him, “One has to express opinions when he appears in this sort of inquiry, and I believe that yours will be found to be a conservative and well-founded estimate of the situation facing the Committee.” Bush added that he had personally reviewed Laughlin’s prior testimony and felt it was “certainly well handled and valuable.”30
After testifying, Laughlin received a postcard at the Carnegie Institution in Washington from an irate citizen in Los Angeles. “As an American descendant of Americans for over 3 00 years, I’d like to learn what prompted you to supply [the Senate Immigration Committee]… with so much material straight from Hitler’s original edition of Mein Kampf.”31
At about this time, Laughlin was also permitted to testify before the Special Committee on Immigration and Naturalization of the New York State Chamber of Commerce. In May of 1939, Laughlin’s report, Immigration and Conquest, was published under the imprimatur of the New York State Chamber of Commerce and “Harry H. Laughlin, Carnegie Institution of Washington.” The 267-page document, filled with raceological tenets, claimed that America would soon suffer “conquest by settlement and reproduction” through an infestation of defective immigrants. As a prime illustration, Laughlin offered “The Parallel Case of the House Rat,” in which he traced rodent infestation from Europe to the rats’ ability “to travel in sailing ships.”32
Laughlin then explained, in a section entitled “The Jew as an Immigrant into the United States,” that Jews were being afforded too large a quota altogether because they were being improperly considered by their nationality instead of as a distinct racial type. By Laughlin’s calculations, no more than six thousand Jews per year ought to be able to enter the United States under the existing national quota system-the system he helped organize a half-decade earlier-but many more were coming in because they were classified as German or Russian or Polish instead ofJewish. He asked that Jews in the United States “assimilate” properly and prove their “loyalty to the American institutions” was “greater than their loyalty to Jews scattered through other nations.” Immigration and Conquest’s precepts were in many ways identical to Nazi principles. Laughlin and the ERO proudly sent a copy to Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick, as well as to other leading Nazis, including Verschuer, Lenz, Ploetz and even Rüdin at a special address care of a university in occupied Czechoslovakia.33
In late 1938, the Carnegie Institution finally disengaged from Eugenical News. The publication became a quarterly completely under the aegis of the American Eugenics Society, published out of AES offices in Manhattan, with a new editorial committee that did not include Laughlin or any other Carnegie scientist. The first issue of the reorganized publication was circulated in March of 1939. Shortly thereafter, the Carnegie Institution formalized Laughlin’s retirement, effective at the end of the year. On September 1, 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland, igniting World War II. Highly publicized atrocities against Polish Jews began at once, shocking the world. Efforts by Laughlin in the final months of 1939 to find a new sponsor for the ERO were unsuccessful. On December 31, 1939, Laughlin officially retired. The Eugenics Record Office was permanently closed the same day.34
Laughlin and his wife immediately moved back to Kirksville, Missouri. The last years of his life were uneventful, and he died in Kirksville on January 26,1943. Davenport eulogized him in Eugenical News as a great man whose views were opposed by those of “a different social philosophy which is founded more on sentiment and less on a thorough analysis of the facts.” Davenport saluted his protege, predicting that within a generation Laughlin’s work would be “widely appreciated” for what it really was: “preservation… from the clash of opposing ideals and instincts found in the more diverse racial or geographical groups.”35
Strangely enough, Laughlin, the staunch defender of strong germ plasm and warrior against the feebleminded and the hereditarily defective, left no children. The family kept it a secret, but the rumor was that Laughlin himself suffered from an inherited disease that made him subject to uncontrollable seizures. These seizures had occasionally occurred in front of his colleagues at the ERO. Laughlin’s condition had been discovered in the 1920s upon his return from Europe. During one episode, Laughlin reportedly drove off the road near Cold Spring Harbor and almost ran into the water. An obstruction stopped his vehicle. Laughlin nearly died that night, and his wife reportedly never allowed him to drive a car again.36
Among his many crusades, Laughlin may best be remembered for his antagonism toward epileptics. He claimed that epilepsy was synonymous with feeblemindedness, and that people with epilepsy did not belong in society. He fought to keep such people out of America and demanded their sterilization and even their imprisonment in segregated camps. No wonder the family kept his condition a secret. Childless and frustrated, Harry Hamilton Laughlin reportedly suffered his genetic disease in silence and died under its grip. The disease: epilepsy.37
* * *
Once Laughlin retired on December 31,1939, Carnegie began the immediate and systematic dismantling of the ERO, abandoning three decades of support for racial eugenics. Mail addressed to the ERO, and even letters specifically addressed to Laughlin or Davenport, were not forwarded to either man. Instead, a series of standard responses were typed up for clerical staff to utilize in replying to all correspondents. The message: work at the office had been suddenly discontinued and no questions could be answered.38
Personal correspondents were told to contact Laughlin or Davenport directly at their home addresses. But if a letter involved even the slightest reference to eugenics or the Cold Spring Harbor installation, it was answered with a vague customized form letter. For example, on February 19, 1940, the widow of Lucien Howe sent a handwritten personal note to Davenport lamenting the news that the ERO had been discontinued. An officer of the Carnegie Institution replied for him, writing back to the aging Mrs. Howe, “Your letter of the 19th to Dr. Davenport has been turned over to me for reply” and so on.39
When eugenic enthusiasts earnestly mailed in their family trees or genealogical trait records, or requested copies of their files or pertinent information from them, they were deftly answered with noncommittal form letters. When a Texas man offered family information, he received a curt note, “Doctor Laughlin has resigned, and for the time being at least, the Genetics Record Office is not in a position to file and index family records.” The same type of reply was mailed out time and time again. The ERO had operated under the name “Eugenics Record Office” until 1939, when Carnegie officials insisted on a cosmetic name change to “Genetics Record Office.” From 1939 on, Carnegie Officials consistently referred to the ERO as the “Genetics Record Office” or sometimes simply the “Record Office,” avoiding any use of the word eugenics.40
Letters came in for years. Carnegie officials generally acted as though they had no access to Laughlin’s files and therefore could not answer specific questions. But in fact Carnegie administrators kept the files close at hand and quietly checked them in some cases. For example, when Jane Betts in Wichita asked about record #51323 on February 29, 1944, a Carnegie official quickly plucked her record out of a million files and replied about its status. With few exceptions, however, questions addressed to the Eugenics Record Office were generally answered with no real information except that the office was closed and no data was available.41
After World War II, when the magnitude of Hitler’s eugenicide became apparent, the Carnegie Institution decided to get rid of its records. It sold the ERO building at Cold Spring Harbor but retained the rest of the facilities. Officials destroyed many of Laughlin’s years-old unpublished workshe
ets on horse racing and breeding (an adjunct to his investigations in human heredity), but finding recipients for the rest of the ERO’s enormous and controversial collection was not easy. In May of 1947, a leading heredity clinic at the University of Michigan was offered the files but wondered whether Carnegie would provide a stipend to house the materials. Carnegie would not. So Carnegie kept searching for someone to take the files.42
In September of 1947, a Carnegie administrator overseeing the dismantled Cold Spring Harbor operation wrote to the Dight Institute, an independent eugenic research organization at the University of Minnesota. “If any institution is interested in the records of the Genetics Record Office, I am confident that arrangements could be made… to transfer them.” But, the note added, “there is very little chance that those funds [formerly used to run the ERO] would be transferred with the records.”43
Dight director Sheldon Reed, an ardent eugenicist, replied, “It seems a great pity to me that the work must be abandoned.” As for transferring the voluminous files to Dight, Reed posed a number of questions about the size and breadth of the collection and the cost of the transfer. Dight did not want to pay any of the moving expenses. As Dight officials pondered the usefulness of a collection they termed “colossal,” Reed was frank with the Carnegie Institution. “I am sorry to take up your time with this business [the many logistical questions],” he wrote, “but it may be that you are even more interested in getting rid of records than I am in obtaining them.”44
Eventually, Carnegie officials decided the best idea was to disperse the ERO records. In January of 1948, the Dight Institute agreed to house the ERO’s extensive individual trait and family documents if Carnegie would defray the expected $1,000 shipping costs. Some six months later the Minnesota Historical Society agreed to take a half-ton of biographical jubilee books, family genealogical volumes and related materials. At the same time, the New York Public Library received a thousand ERO volumes of family genealogical books and local histories. Horse racing and stud breeding publications were handed over to the family that had originally sponsored the research. Carnegie donated Davenport’s voluminous papers and Laughlin’s ERO operational papers to the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, while maintaining some documents at a Cold Spring Harbor archive and retaining some others in Washington. When the Dight Institute closed its doors in the 1990s, its ERO papers were also sent to the American Philosophical Society, which now holds the largest consolidated eugenic collection anywhere.45