War Against the Weak Read online

  Many state officials were clearly reluctant to enforce the laws precisely because the results were radical and irreversible. The legality of the operations and the question of due process had never been satisfactorily answered. The Eugenics Section of the American Breeders Association admitted in a report that the prior legislation had been pushed by “some very small energetic groups of enthusiasts, who have had influence in the legislatures… [but] it was a new and untried proposition. Public sentiment demanding action was absent. Law officers of the state were not anxious to undertake defense of a law the constitutionality of which was questioned. “26

  Moreover, the whole concept of eugenic solutions, such as marriage restriction, forced segregation and involuntary sterilization was still disdained by most Americans. Catholics by and large considered the termination of reproductive capability to be an act against God. “It is evident,” the report continued, “that active hostility and opposition will arise as soon as there is any attempt to carry out the laws in a through-going manner.” The report concluded, “So we must frankly confess that… this movement for race betterment is as yet little more than a hobby of a few groups of people.”27

  The Eugenics Section declared, “It is, therefore, easy to see why little has been actually done. The machinery of administration has to be created…. Much more extensive education of the public will be necessary before the practice of sterilization can be carried out to the extent which will make it a factor of importance.”28

  Clearly, the eugenics movement needed scientific validation, standards to identify exactly who was feebleminded and unfit, and most importantly, society’s acceptance of the need to cut off defective families. Eugenicists in other countries, who had been corresponding together for some years, also felt the need to broaden acceptance of their beliefs. All of them wanted eugenic solutions to be applied on a global basis. Their mission, after all, was to completely reshape humanity, not just one corner of it. Toward this end, the Americans, working closely with their counterparts in Germany and England, scheduled an international conference in London. July of 1912 was selected because it coincided with a visit to London by Stanford University’s Jordan and other eugenic leaders.29

  Galton had died in January of 1911. By that time, his original theories of positive marriage, as well as his ideas on biometric study, had been circumvented by a more radical London group, the Eugenics Education Society. The Eugenics Education Society had adopted American attitudes on negative eugenics. By now, America’s negative eugenics had also been purveyed to like-minded social engineers throughout Europe, especially in Germany and the Scandinavian nations, where theories about Nordic superiority were well received. Hence, this first conference was aptly called the First International Congress on Eugenics, bringing together some several hundred delegates and speakers from across America, Belgium, England, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and Norway.30

  Not a few of the conferees would attend simply to investigate the emerging field of eugenics. But many of the Europeans attended because they harbored their own racial or ethnic biases against their nations’ indigenous, immigrant or defective populations. For example, Jon Alfred Mjeen of Norway was that country’s leading raceologist and eugenicist. He believed that crossing blond-haired Norwegians with native dark-haired Lapps produced a defective mulatto-like breed. Another major delegate was Alfred Ploetz, the spiritual father of Germany’s race hygiene and eugenics movement.31

  Organizers draped the conference with some of the most prestigious names in the world. Major Leonard Darwin, son of Charles Darwin, was appointed president. Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, would represent the king. Churchill was alarmed at Britain’s growing population of “persons… of mental defect” and advocated a eugenic solution. The vice presidents would include David Starr Jordan, Davenport, Ploetz and Alexander Graham Bell. To impress American governors and scientific organizations, the Eugenics Congress leadership wanted the U.S. State Department to send an official American delegate. Missouri’s representative on the all-powerful House Appropriations Committee proffered the request. However, the State Department could not comply because the meeting was nongovernmental; therefore the U.S. government could not participate.32

  Instead, Secretary of State P. C. Knox agreed to write the invitations on official letterhead and mail them to distinguished Americans in the realms of science, higher learning and state government all across the country. The U.S. State Department invitations would be officially extended on behalf of Alfred Mitchell Innes, the British Embassy’s charge d’affaires in Washington, who in tum was submitting them on behalf of the Eugenics Education Society in London. Hence the invitations bore the clear imprimatur of the U.S. Secretary of State, yet technically Secretary Knox was merely conveying the invitation. The Knox letter also promised “to be the medium of communication to the Embassy” for any reply.33

  Knox’s official-looking invitations were each virtually alike. “At the request of the British Embassy at this capital, I have the honor to send you herewith an invitation extended to you by the Organizing Committee of the First International Eugenics Congress.” Kansas Governor Walter Stubbs received one. Kentucky Governor James McCreary received one. Maryland Governor Phillip L. Goldsborough received one. Every governor of every state received one. Invitations were also sent to the presidents of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, the American Economic Association at Yale University, the American Philosophical Society, and many other esteemed organizations of science and academic study. Knox also mailed an invitation to every president of every leading medical society, including the American Gynecological Society, the American Neurological Association, the American Pediatric Society and, of course, the American Medical Association. Hundreds of such letters were posted on a single day-June 20, 1912.34

  Because the invitations were distributed just a few weeks before the London congress, few if any of the invitees could actually attend. This fact must have been understood in advance. After all, many received the invitation quite late, often only after their summer travels were complete. Nonetheless, nearly every recipient issued a gracious decline, and a personal note of thanks expressing their regret at missing an important event. All but one, that is. Secretary of War Henry Stimson dashed off a stern rebuff reminding Secretary of State Knox that such official involvement in a private conference was precluded by law. Stimson quoted the law in his reply: “No money… shall be expended… for expenses of attendance of any person at any meeting or convention of members of any society or association” unless authorized by statutory appropriation.35

  The message was clear. Knox had, for all intents and purposes, turned the State Department into a eugenics post office and invitation bureau. From Knox’s point of view, however, he was undoubtedly only too happy to help the eugenics program of the Carnegie Institution. Prior to his service as secretary of state, Knox had been an attorney for the Carnegie Steel Company, and was once called by Carnegie “the best lawyer I have ever had.”36

  Proper or not, eugenics had overnight been packaged into an officially recognized and prestigious science in the eyes of those who counted.

  * * *

  Some four hundred delegates from America and Europe gathered at the University of London in late July of 1912, where for five days a diverse assemblage of research papers were presented exploring the social science and heredity of man. Two French doctors reviewed Parisian insanity records for the previous half-century. Alcoholism as an inheritable trait was debated. But the proceedings were dominated by the U.S. contingent and their theories of racial eugenics. Galton’s hope of finding the measurable physical qualities of man, an endeavor named biometrics, had become passe. One leading eugenicist reported, “‘Biometry’… might have never existed so far as the congress was concerned.” Indeed, Galton’s chief disciple, Karl Pearson, declined to even attend the congress.37

  Instead, the racial biology
of America’s ERO, and its clarions for sterilization, dominated. The preliminary ABA report from what was dubbed “the American Committee on Sterilization” was heralded as a highlight of the meeting. One prominent British eugenicist, writing in a London newspaper, identified Davenport as an American “to whom all of us in this country are immensely indebted, for the work of his office has far outstripped anything of ours.”38

  One key British eugenicist added that if Galton were still alive and could “read the recent reports of the American Eugenics Record Office, which have added more to our knowledge of human heredity in the last three years than all former work on that subject put together, [he] would quickly seek to set our own work in this country upon the same sure basis. “39

  The medical establishment began to take notice as well, presenting eugenics as a legitimate medical concept. The Journal of the American Medical Association’s coverage glowed. JAMA’s headline rang out: “The International Eugenics Congress, An Event of Great Importance to the History of Evolution, Has Taken Place.” Its correspondent enthusiastically portrayed the eugenicists’ theory of social Darwinism, spotlighting the destructive quality of charity and stressing the value of disease to the natural order. “The unfit among men,” the JAMA correspondent reported from a key congress speech, “were no longer killed by hunger and disease, but were cherished and enabled to reproduce their kind. It was true, they [society] could not but glory in this saving of suffering; but they must not blind themselves to the danger of interfering with Nature’s ways. Cattle breeders bred from the best stocks…. Conscious selection must replace the blind forces of natural selection.”40

  Legitimacy, recognition and proliferation were only the beginning. In 1911, Davenport had authored a textbook entitled Heredity in Relation to Eugenics. It had been published by the prestigious Henry Holt & Co. The volume blended genuine biological observation with bizarre pseudoscientific postulations on personal habits and even simple preferences commanded by one’s heredity. “Each ‘family’ will be seen to be stamped with a peculiar set of traits depending upon the nature of its germ plasm,” wrote Davenport. “One family will be characterized by political activity, another by scholarship, another by financial success, another by professional success, another by insanity in some members with or without brilliancy in others, another by imbecility and epilepsy, another by larceny and sexual immorality, another by suicide, another by mechanical ability, or vocal talent, or ability in literary expression.”41

  Davenport’s book promulgated a law of heredity that condemned the marriage of cousins as prohibited consanguinity, or marriage of close relatives. “[Should] a person that belongs to a strain in which defect is present… marry a cousin or other near relative… such consanguineous marriages are fraught with grave danger.” Nonetheless, Davenport and his colleagues extolled the marriage of cousins among the elite as eugenically desired; for example, they commonly pointed to great men, such as Darwin, who married his first cousin.42

  In the same textbook, Davenport insisted that if immigration from southeastern Europe continued, America would “rapidly become darker in pigmentation, smaller in stature, more mercurial, more attached to music and art, more given to crimes of larceny, kidnapping, assault, murder, rape and sex-immorality.” He added a scholarly note about Jews: “There is no question that, taken as a whole, the horde of Jews that are now coming to us from Russia and the extreme southeast of Europe, with their intense individualism and ideals of gain at the cost of any interest, represent the opposite extreme from the early English and the more recent Scandinavian immigration with their ideals of community life in the open country, advancement by the sweat of the brow, and the uprearing of families in the fear of God and the love of country. “43

  Davenport’s textbook concluded, “In other words, immigrants are desirable who are of ‘good blood’; undesirable who are of ‘bad blood.”‘44

  The volume declared that, without question, Mendel’s laws governed all human character: “Man is an organism-an animal; and the laws of improvement of corn and of race horses hold true for him also.” In Davenport’s mind, this axiom spawned far-reaching social consequences. Applying Mendelian formulas to pauperism, for example, Davenport cited “shiftlessness” as a genuine genetic trait, which could be rated for severity. On page 80 of his textbook, Davenport explained with mathematical authority, “Classifying all persons in these two families as very shiftless, somewhat shiftless, and industrious, the following conclusions are reached. When both parents are very shiftless, practically all children are very shiftless or somewhat shiftless.… When both parents are shiftless in some degree, about 15 percent of the known offspring are recorded as industrious.” Not even the sudden onset of a prolonged disease incapacitating or killing the family breadwinner, and thereby creating financial woes for widows and orphans, was an excuse for poverty. “The man of strong stock,” Davenport’s textbook explained, “will not suffer from prolonged disease.”45

  As a solution to society’s eugenic problem, Davenport’s textbook strongly advocated for mass compulsory sterilization and incarceration of the unfit, a proliferation of marriage restriction laws, and plenty of government money to study whether intelligence testing would justify such measures against a mere 8 percent of America’s children or as many as 38 percent.46

  But could Davenport’s eugenic textbook, and two or three others like it, become accepted doctrine at the nation’s universities? American eugenicists were firmly entrenched in the biology, zoology, social science, psychology and anthropology departments of the nation’s leading institutions of higher learning. Methodically, eugenic texts, especially Davenport’s, were integrated into college coursework and, in some cases, actually spurred a stand-alone eugenics curriculum. The roster was long and prestigious, encompassing scores of America’s finest schools. Harvard University’s two courses were taught by Drs. East and Castle. Princeton University’s course was taught by Dr. Schull and Laughlin himself. Yale’s by Dr. Painter. Purdue’s by Dr. Smith. The University of Chicago’s by Dr. Bisch. Northwestern University, a hotbed of radical eugenic thought, offered a course by Dr. Kornhauser, who had interned at Cold Spring Harbor47

  Each school wove eugenics into its own academics. At the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Holmes’s semester-long sociology course was simply named “Eugenics.” At New York University, Dr. Binder’s fifteen-week sociology course was named “Family and Eugenics,” and was attended by some twenty-five male and female students. At Stanford University, Dr. V. L. Kellogg taught a course covering zoology and eugenics. Even tiny schools inaugurated eugenics courses. At Alma College in Michigan, the biology department offered Dr. MacCurdy’s “Heredity and Eugenics” as an eighteen-week course. At tiny Bates College in Maine, Dr. Pomeroy’s eighteen-week biology course was called “Genetics.”48

  Eugenics rocketed through academia, becoming an institution virtually overnight. By 1914, some forty-four major institutions offered eugenic instruction. Within a decade, that number would swell to hundreds, reaching some 20,000 students annually.49

  High schools quickly adopted eugenic textbooks as well. Typical was George William Hunter’s high school biology book, published by the nation’s largest secondary school book publisher, the American Book Company. Hunter’s 1914 textbook, A Civic Biology: Presented in Problems, echoed many of Davenport’s principles. For example, in one passage Hunter railed against unfit families “spreading disease, immorality, and crime to all parts of this country.” His text added, “Largely for them, the poorhouse and the asylum exist. They take from society but they give nothing in return. They are true parasites.” Before long, the overwhelming majority of high schools employed eugenic textbooks that emphasized clear distinctions between “superior families” and “inferior families.”50

  But impeding Davenport and Laughlin’s campaign for eugenic programs of sterilization, segregation and social restriction was the lack of easy-to-apply standards to earmark the inferior. Measuring ma
n’s intelligence had always been a eugenic pursuit. In 1883, Galton established what amounted to an intelligence test center in London, charging applicants three pence each to be evaluated. He measured physical response time to auditory, tactile and visual cues. In 1890, Galton’s idea was refined by his associate, the psychologist James Cattell, who devised a series of fifty tests he called “Mental Tests and Measurements.” Like Galton’s intelligence examinations, these “mental tests” logged physical reaction time to sounds and pressures.51

  French psychologist Alfred Binet was not a eugenicist; he believed that one’s environment shaped one’s mind. In 1905, at the request of the French education ministry, Binet and physician Theodor Simon published the first so-called “intelligence test” to help classify the levels of retarded children, allowing them to be placed in proper classes. The Binet-Simon Test offered students thirty questions of increasing difficulty from which the test grader could calculate a “mental level.” But Binet insisted that his test did not yield fixed numbers. With assistance, special educational methods and sheer practice a child could improve his score, “helping him literally to become more intelligent than he was before.” To this end, Binet developed mental and physical exercises designed to raise his students’ intelligence levels. These exercises actually yielded improved scores.52 Heredity was in no way a predeterminer of intelligence, he insisted.