The History and Practice of Eugenics, PT. 3

The History and Practice of Eugenics

In the early 1900's, it became the norm to recommend that mental patients and mentally handicapped people should be institutionalized away from the rest of society. Prior to this era, only criminally insane people had to be locked up, someone who was dangerous to themselves or others.

Some of the things eugenicists pointed to as a basis for their beliefs such as physical superiority to poor people failed to take into account that this was because they ate better diets and other environmental factors rather than genetic factors.

I had never thought of H.G. Wells fiction writing as being in support of eugenics, but other things he wrote certainly did. In 1903 he wrote, "the conclusion is that if we could prevent or discourage the inferior sort of people from having children, and if we could stimulate and encourage the superior sort to increase and multiply, we should raise the general standard of the race."

The modern practice of genetic profiling for couples planning to have children is not a new one. Dr. Caleb Williams Saleeby, believed that couples should have "health books" to prove that their family line did not have any congenital deformities. He was a writer and journalist, who helped start the Eugenics Education Society. He believed that mankind was the perfection of evolution and that white men were superior to all other races of men. And he based this on craniometry. Paul Broca and Samuel Morton were two of the men who studied human skulls, for form , structure and brain capacity, as a method for determining race. Morton believed that blacks have smaller brains than whites do. (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/141810/craniometryhttp://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/141810/craniometry)

I have read things and seen things on television that point out that there were many people in England and the United States who agreed on a great many things with the Nazi's. Winston Churchill evidentally agreed with them in racial cleansing, because he was a eugenicist. He wrote to Prime Minister Asquith, "I am convinced that the multiplication of the Feeble-Minded, which is proceeding now at an artificial rate, unchecked by any of the old restraints of nature, and actually fostered by civilised conditions, is a terrible danger to the race."(Churchill's Empire: The World That Made Him and the World He Made - Richard Toye - 2010)

Eugenics became popular in the United States at about the same time as it did in Britain. In the United States, it always had racial motives. Whereas in Britain, the upper class had a surplus of factory workers, Americans had surplus people in the form of freed slaves. Then you also have to factor in that at the time it really became full blown, in the early 1900's, immigration was becoming a problem, so new groups of people were added to the list of unfit.

Biologists, Charles B. Davenport and Harry H. Laughlin, were members of the American Breeders Association. They founded The Eugenics Record Office with money from the Carnegie Institute in the early 1900's(I have read various dates from 1904-1910) at Cold Spring Harbor, New York.

"New blood will make the American population darker in pigmentation, smaller in stature, more mercurial . . . more given to crimes of larceny, kidnapping, assault, murder, rape, and sex-immorality."

(In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity - Page 47,Daniel J. Kevles - 1985; Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad - Page 159, Matthew Frye Jacobson - 2001)

"The problem of the socially fit must be treated not as one of color, but as a problem of the spread of feeble-mindedness."(Dr. Charles Davenport,1913)

Despite having said this, he believed that feeble-mindedness was spread by people of color.

In their research they used human pedigrees, hereditary questionnairesand interviews of certain groups of special interest to them. (http://library.cshl.edu/special-collections/eugenicshttp://library.cshl.edu/special-collections/eugenics). They had people take these questionnaires door to door. They recorded the characteristics of families on index cards. They had 750,000 of them by 1924. They also used data collected from the census. They believed that their data gave them sound reasons to restrict immigration and marriage, to segregate the races and to forcibly sterilize criminals and anyone they considered to be undesirable. Harry Laughlin began testifying before Congress on their findings with regard to immigration and sterilization, by the early 1920's. By the second decade of the 20th century, 12 states had laws mandating forced sterilization based on the opinions and policies of the Eugenics Record Office. By 1924, 3000 people were sterilized. You can find a pretty comprehensive list of the books written by Davenport and Laughlin, as well as their colleagues here: http://library.cshl.edu/special-collections/eugenicshttp://library.cshl.edu/special-collections/eugenics (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) It's interesting that one of the books in entitled, The Hereditary Factor in Pellagra Pellagra is a disease caused by a niacin deficiency and is not hereditary. It became a problem when corn and corn products became staples of our diets.

Although the page found at the above link says they started the ERO with money from a "local resident," and does not name the Carnegie Foundation, down toward the bottom of the page, is a list of Carnegie Institution files, that pretty well lays out their connection to eugenics. In includes, correspondence from the American Eugenics Society, American Philosophical Society,

Eugenics Advisory Committee, Eugenics Record Office-Financial Statement, Eugenics Research Association, Genetics Record Office, Dept. of Genetics-Biological Laboratory-Plans for Unified Operation.

Some of the people associated with Davenport and the ERO were people like John Harvey Kellogg and the Harrimans, who were railroad magnates.

The Harriman railroad fortune paid local charities, like the New York Bureau of Industries and Immigration to find Jewish, Italian and other immigrants in New York and other places and confine, deport and sterilize them. Mrs. E.H. Harriman(Mary) helped fund the ERO.

(http://hnn.us/articles/1796.htmlhttp://hnn.us/articles/1796.html)(The Fraud of the Fraud: Have You Been Taken for a Ride? - Page 132

Jose M. Paulino - 2008

John Harvey Kellogg, doctor, co-developer of Corn Flakes, founded the Race Betterment Foundation with Charles Davenport and Irving Fisher. You can find some information on the things done in Michigan as a result.(http://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/MI/MI.htmlhttp://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/MI/MI.html)(http://www.indiana.edu/~engs/ebook/samples.htmlhttp://www.indiana.edu/~engs/ebook/samples.html)

The Carnegie Foundation, had a man named Frederick Osborn, as a trustee. He wrote, A Preface to Eugenics, in 1940. He obtained grants in 1941, from the foundation for Wake University's genetics program. Dr. William Allan and Dr. C. Nash Herndon who headed the department, believed as did Osborn, that doctors trained in genetics could further the aims of eugenics without the sort of taint that went with the Nazi race purification.

Nevertheless, they still assisted some of the counties in North Carolina to carry out state sponsored sterilization programs. Andrew Carnegie believed that most charitable giving by the upper class had been "indiscriminate charity...spent as to encourage the slothful, the drunken, the unworthy," and the rich needed to address the underlying causes of those conditions, so that their charity would be a better investment. Or in the words of John D. Rockefeller, they needed to be, “a search for cause, an attempt to cure evils at their source."

The Carnegie Institution of Washington also funded Charles Davenport and the ERO. Davenport said, “tens of millions have been given to bolster up the weak and alleviate the suffering of the sick,” while “no important means have been provided to enable us to learn how the stream of weak and susceptible protoplasm may be checked.”

The Indiana Compulsory Sterilization Law, is often pointed at as being the blue print for the laws of other states, it was not the first state law based on eugenics. In 1896, Connecticut passed laws that marriage laws that were exclusionary. The 1905 law in Indiana was pretty typical, in that it forbade marriage for mentally deficient people, those who had transmittable diseases, and habitual drunks. At face value, it would appear that it was because mentally deficient people and drunks would not have the capacity to make a contract, which marriage is, and the disease part would be to stop people from entering into a contract without full disclosure of the facts. But parties had to present a certificate of medical soundness before they could get married. The medical examination was probably designed to screen out people. By 1907, they enacted the compulsory sterilization act. Then other states took up the movement. By 1917, sixteen states had sterilization laws, for criminals, rapists, epileptics and idiots.

This is how the law read:

CHAPTER 215.

AN ACT entitled an act to prevent procreation of confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles and rapists; providing that superintendents and boards of managers of institutions where such persons are confined shall have the authority and are empowered to appoint a committee of experts, consisting of two (2) physicians, to examine into the mental condition of such inmates.

[H. 364. Approved March 9, 1907.]

Preamble.

Whereas, Heredity plays a most important part in the trans-

mission of crime, idiocy and imbecility;

Penal Institutions—Surgical Operations.

Therefore, Be it enacted by the general assembly of the State of Indiana, That on and after the passage of this act it shall be compulsory for each and every institution in the state, entrusted with the care of confirmed criminals, idiots, rapists and imbeciles, to appoint upon its staff, in addition to the regular institutional physician, two (2) skilled surgeons of recognized ability, whose duty it shall be, in conjunction with the chief physician of the institution, to examine the mental and physical condition of such inmates as are recommended by the institutional physician and board of managers. If, in the judgment of this committee of experts and the board of managers, procreation is inadvisable and there is no probability of improvement of the mental condition of the inmate, it shall be lawful for the surgeons to perform such operation for the prevention of procreation as shall be decided safest and most effective. But this operation shall not be performed except in cases that have been pronounced unimprovable: Provided, That in no case shall the consultation fee be more than three ($3.00) dollars to each expert, to be paid out of the funds appropriated for the maintenance of such institution.

(Acts 1907, Laws of the State of Indiana, Passed at the Sixty-Fifth Regular Session of the General Assembly, Indianapolis: William B. Burford, Publisher (1907) pp. 377-378)

"The laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race."(Madison Grant, 1916, Co-Founder of the American Eugenics Society)

Madison Grant was also a member of the New York Zoological Society. In 1906, he authorized an exhibit at the Bronx Zoo, where a 22 year old black man named Oda Benga, was in a cage with an orangutan. When he met with some protest, he replied that it was clearly meant to be a demonstration of Darwin's Theory. Those who supported Darwin's Theory agreed with him. Oda Benga committed suicide ten years later.

Adolf Hitler referred to Madison Grant's book, The Passing of the Great Race, as his bible.

"The black man has never been a competitor but has always been subservient to the white race. And just so long as he remains subservient his position is secure, and just so soon as he becomes a competitor his fate is sealed." (Dr. Benjamin Hays, 1905)

Carrie Buck was a seventeen year old girl who was the first to be sterilized under the Eugenics law passed in Virginia. She was chosen from the Virginia Colony for the Epileptic and Feeble Minded. Her mother was feeble minded and a resident of the colony. Carrie was raped and gave birth to a supposedly, feeble minded child. They believed that she carried the genetic traits for feeble mindedness, and being sexually promiscuous. Her teacher said that she sent notes to school boys which were flirtatious in nature. Harry H. Laughlin, who had never met her sent by mail, a disposition saying that she was a good candidate for sterilization. On October 19, 1927, she was sterilized. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, in reference to Buck v. Bell, "It is better for all of the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. Three generations of imbeciles are enough." The decision had been 8 to 1 in favor of her being sterilized. The one judge who was against it was Catholic. The child that Carrie bore named Vivian, despite being deemed feeble minded, earned B's on her first grade report card. Due to Buck v. Bell, 8,000 Virginians were sterilized. At one time or another 33 states have enacted laws that caused 60,000 people to undergo sterilization. Buck v. Bell has never been overturned. This sterilization continued until the 1980's.

In 1924, The Immigration Act restricted who could immigrate to America. President Calvin Coolidge said, "America must be kept American. Biological laws show . . . that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races." (Survival of the Fittest, Jonathan Kellerman - 2002)

Most people believe that the idea of eugenics came from Nazi Germany; not so, they only became more efficient at ridding their society of undesirable people. Sweden began instituting eugenics about the same time as Germany did, and their laws were on the books until the 1970's. The Danish had eugenics laws before Germany did, and theirs stayed on the books until 1967. Finland also had eugenics laws, as did Norway and Switzerland. Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, about how he thought that the U. S. policy of restricting immigration based on race was a good policy. Gerhard Wagner, who was the head of the National Socialists Physicians League, stated that America's eugenics policies should be used as a model for Germany.

Hitler's personal physician was Karl Brandt. He was responsible for the killing of crippled children. Viktor Brack, who was part of Hitler's Personal Chancellery, was responsible for Aktion T-4, which was the program that trained doctors in the methods of genocide, then he assigned them to work in the gas chambers exterminating Jews. Both Brandt and Brack were convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity and executed June 2, 1948. But there were others involved who were not punished.

Dr. Gerhard Wagner said at a Nazi rally in Nuremberg, September 8-14, 1936, " The millions and billions that we have spent...for care of the genetically ill, is a squandering of our national resources that we National Socialists cannot justify when we consider the needs of the healthy population." And there are those that are professing like ideals now. Both the German, Society for Race Hygiene, and the US Eugenics Record office operated under Francis Galton. The Eugenics Congress was held in London, in 1912, in New York in 1922 and 1932. The 1932 Eugenics Congress made Ernst Rudin president of the International Federation of Eugenics Societies. Rudin was a Nazi, and ran Nazi eugenics work at Rockefeller's Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. So, Hitler, through Rudin, received Rockefeller funding for sterilization and euthanasia programs.

Marie Kopp American Society on Maternal Health stated that the Nazi system of sterilization was carried out in a fair manner and had been based on the California experiment that had resulted in 2500 of the first 3000 Americans being sterilized before 1924. The ERO even bragged about the Nazi laws on sterilization were worded almost exactly like Laughlin's model sterilization laws. The Nazis in turn admired him. He was given an honorary degree from the University of Heidelberg. Not many people know that the founder of IBM, Thomas J. Watson, provided the Germans with his punch card technology to use in their death camps. Those infamous numbers that were tattooed onto prisoners, were identification numbers to be fed into the IBM computers. IBM had used this technology in a study conducted in Jamaica on race mixing. It is daunting to be typing this up on a computer and realizing that computers were first invented and used for eugenics. After the war, Mengele and others were not prosecuted and some of them continued their experiments in Germany, like Otmar Von Virscher.

The chemical manufacturing company, I.G. Farben, produced Zyklon B for the Nazi gas chambers. Twenty Four of their employees designed the gas chambers and due to this were tried at Nuremberg. The charges ranged from genocide and slavery to fomenting conflict. I. G. Farben, partnered with John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, to form a company called, Standard I.G. Farben. After the war, I.G. Farben became Hiechst A.G.

In the 20th century, all of the ideas, scientific racism, Social Darwinism, and eugenics, began to be used together effectively. The Nazis were not the first Germans to utilize concentration camps. At a place called Shark Island, in Namibia, they imprisoned, enslaved, abused and killed many black men, women and children. They rid themselves of 3500 people. This is considered the first genocide of the 20th century. People sold their skulls and heads to museums in the name of racial science and proving that Africans were inferior. Eugen Fischer went there to study the remaining people in order to prove his belief that black genetic characteristics were dominant and that race mixing was bad because it would eventually wipe out the good white genes.

What you have to keep reminding yourself is this, according to the idea of survival of the fittest, if black genes wipe out the good white genes, then the black genes are superior or the fittest. So, in effect, they saw that Darwin and Galton's ideas that superior white genes would wipe out the inferior genes of other races was wrong, and used the part of the science that was useful to them, in order to justify what they were doing. And simultaneously, they tried to distract people from realizing that they were scared to death that black genes really might be superior. But genetics really don't work that way. For instance, there are people who are black but who are able to pass for white. Who is to say, which genes are dominant and superior, they might appear white, but carry a genetic illness common to blacks. Genetics are not about appearance.