American Eugenics Movement

4 Key excerpts on "American Eugenics Movement"

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  Human Biodiversity

  Genes, Race, and History

  • Jonathan Marks(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  5

  The Eugenics Movement

  The only major influence scientists have had on social legislation came in the 1920s, when eugenicists successfully campaigned for involuntary sterilization of “unfit” people and for the restriction of immigration. The theory was an attempt to remedy social problems through biological means, and though tempting in its simplicity, it was conceptually flawed and failed to solve society’s problems, which require social, not biological solutions.

  Probably the most instructive episode in the history of the study of human biology was the eugenics movement, which originated in late-19th-century England, flourished in America between about 1910 and 1930, and died out with World War II. It is out of the eugenics movement that the study of human genetic variation was born.1

  But tracing the eugenics movement is not simply an exercise in the history of social thought. It is paradigmatic for the scientific study of human biology. We see in the eugenics movement how any study of human biology encodes social values, a situation that the study of clam biology or fly biology does not have to face. We see how scientists expounded on subjects they knew little about, derived results we can now see as thoroughly unjustified, and validated their own social prejudices with the “objectivity” of science. While the eugenics movement was certainly an embarrassing episode in the history of biology, one would be wrong to ignore it as an aberration or an exception. It isn’t the exception: it encapsulates the “rule.” Studying humans can’t be done as dispassionately as studying clams, for there is far more at stake. Therefore the levels of criticism and scholarship must be higher, and the stories that emerge must be subjected to more intense scrutiny from the scholarly community

  A Simple Plan for Making Life Better

  The work of Francis Galton in the latter part of the 19th century established as a major goal of biology the betterment of the human species. In an age that valued its aristocracy and thrived on its ability to exploit its colonies, Galton’s ideas were taken very seriously. His work involved literally the origin of modern statistical analysis, and was directed toward a presumably humanitarian goal: improving the lot of the people on earth.

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  Inequality, Crime, And Social Control

  • George S Bridges, Martha A Myers(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  In what follows, after briefly summarizing the U.S. eugenics movement, I review what we already know about its social origins, arguing that currently available accounts fail to explain why a specific group (“social control workers”) was primarily responsible for the production, dissemination, and application of eugenics theory. I reason that professionalization of the type of work in which members of this group were engaged (social control itself) does much to explain their involvement in eugenics. The professionalization of social control and the production of eugenics theory were interdependent and mutually supportive phenomena: social control workers used eugenics as a vehicle for professionalization, and the movement triumphed partly because it was backed by social control workers who could implement its recommendations.

  The U.S. Eugenics Movement

  In the United States, the eugenics movement started in the 1870s, peaked in popularity about 1910, and began losing credibility about 1920.1 Past historians sometimes dismissed eugenics as a fad that attracted only a few ultra-conservative crackpots and had little impact on actual social policies. Conscience and Convenience (Rothman 1980), the standard history of early twentieth-century criminal justice policies, mentions eugenics only in passing. But, as other historians have shown, liberals and socialists as well as right-wing racists endorsed eugenics (Haller 1963; Pickens 1968; Jenkins 1982; Kevles 1985), and eugenicists profoundly affected the lives of those they deemed unfit (Gould 1985; Noll 1990, forthcoming; Reilly 1991; Rafter 1992a). Eugenicists not only biologized class relationships; they also imposed a form of social control rarely achieved, the prevention of reproduction.

  Eugenicists somaticized inequality in a period when workers were mobilizing a strong socialist movement, women and emancipated blacks were entering the paid work force in significant numbers, and immigrants were flooding American shores. Rates of unemployment and crime shot up in the wake of the Civil War; economic depressions spread severe poverty even among the employed. Alarmed by these threats to stability and traditional values, eugenicists drew on nineteenth-century interpretations of evolution and heredity, concluding that socially problematic groups must be biologically unfit. They did not question the heredity of the industrial magnates on whom they relied for funds (Haller 1963; Hahn 1980; Kevles 1985; Allen 1986), but their ideal was the middle-class professional whose good works demonstrated inherent worthiness.

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  Merchants of Despair

  Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism

  • Robert Zubrin(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Encounter Books

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Eugenics Comes to America

  Our ancestors drove Baptists from Massachusetts Bay in to Rhode Island, but we have no place to drive the Jews to. Also they burned the witches but it seems against the mores to burn any considerable part of our population. Meanwhile, we have somewhat diminished the immigration of these people.

  CHARLES DAVENPORT director of the Eugenics Records Office, letter to Madison Grant, April 7, 19251

     

  AS HAPPENED IN England, Darwin’s theory of human progress through natural selection of superior individuals and races rapidly became popular among the elite in America. Starting in 1861, a group drawn from the nation’s leading patrician families and financiers—including J. P. Morgan, Hugh Auchincloss, Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., James Brown and Howard Potter of Brown Brothers (later Brown Brothers Harriman), Levi Morton and George Bliss of Morton Bliss, members of the Phelps family, and members of the Dodge family—were induced to generously contribute to the project of establishing the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. At the founding ceremony, in 1877, Harvard President Charles W. Eliot explained the purpose of the new institution:

  In whose honor are the chief personages of the nation, state, and city here assembled? Whose palace is this? What divinity is worshipped in this place? . . . Nothing else than the stupendous doctrine of hereditary transmission [which will] . . . enhance the natural interest in vigorous family stocks . . . give a rational basis for penal legislation, and promote both the occasional production of illustrious men and the gradual improvement of the masses of mankind.2

  Although it would shock the millions of people who now visit it every year, the American Museum of Natural History was for six decades, especially under its long-term president Henry Fairfield Osborn (the nephew of J. P. Morgan), a major center for promoting Darwinism and eugenics in the United States.

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  Social Movements in the Nordic Countries

  Moving the Social 48/2012. Journal for social history and the history of social movements

  • (Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Klartext

    (Publisher)

  David Redvaldsen

  Eugenics as a Science and as a Social Movement

  The Cases of Denmark and Norway 1900–1950

  ABSTRACT

  The article compares Danish and Norwegian eugenics in the first half of the twentieth century. It especially investigates sterilisation and racism, both of which are associated with the doctrine. However, it argues that the laws of 1929, 1934 and 1935 allowing sterilisation in Denmark were accepted as means to combat sexual offences. The comparative method supports such a contention, as the Norwegian sterilisation law of 1934 is found to have developed along parallel lines. Neither country had a functioning eugenics society. Therefore the doctrine was the provenance of scientists and other experts. Popularisation attempts met resistance from specialists. Eugenics could nevertheless be applied to debates about criminality or race. Similarities between the Danish and Norwegian versions outweighed differences. But in Denmark there was a greater focus on the pernicious societal effects of “feeblemindedness” than in Norway. Conversely, Norwegian eugenics was more racist than Danish.

  Introduction

  From its inception, the system of thought known as eugenics had a dual nature: it was both a field of scientific endeavour and an ideology.1 Francis Galton (1822–1911), its British originator, advocated eugenics being brought into the national consciousness as a new religion. He also conducted careful statistical investigations underpinning racial improvement as a science. The doctrine was global in its reach, as exemplified by the 1912 International Congress of Eugenics held in London and its follow-up in 1921 in New York. It is therefore very well-suited to transnational studies, either relating to transfers, i. e. how elements from one national context were modified and incorporated into another, or comparisons across countries. In 1990 Mark Adams called for more comparative studies of eugenics.2 Since then, work by Lucassen (2010), Mottier (2010), Porter (1999), and Weingart (1999) has appeared, answering to the description and using Scandinavian or Swedish eugenics as an analytical tool.3

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