Imagine the early days of physics before anyone knew anything about atoms, protons, electrons, and the many other particles physicists routinely work with today. How does one even think about such infinitesimally small particles?

And think about the field of embryology today. Does anyone have any idea of precisely how one microscopic sperm cell and one microscopic egg after joining together begins to morph into you or me? How do these two incredibly small bits of sticky goo – or what my grandmother would have called “schmutz” – lead to the development of hard bone, calcium teeth, fine hair, an expandable bag of skin, and a brain that, during gestation, sprouts neurons at the rate of 250,000 per minute and eventually produces consciousness, intellect and emotions? The brain itself, some scholars say, is so complicated that it might never be capable of understanding itself.

Early Philosophers

Early philosophers widely assumed that one's biological heritage - one's "blood" - was of paramount importance and needed to be safeguarded for the sake of the state.

Plato (427-347 B.C.E.

To ensure the vigor and viability of the inhabitants of the ideal state, Plato, for example, argues in The Republic that child-bearing must be strictly regulated by the state so as to prevent those considered mentally and physically inadequate from procreating. Moreover, weak or deformed infants were to be weeded out ruthlessly:    These children “of the inferior sort, and any one of the others who may be born defective,” he argues, should be handed over to nurses, who “will put [them] away as is proper in some mysterious place.” Plato is referring here to the widespread practice of "exposure," where infants would be taken into the countryside and be left to die of exposure to the elements. In some instances the child is found and saved by others - this is the crucial lynchpin in the storyline of Sophocles' famous Greek tragedy, Oedipus Rex.

Aristotle 384 - 322 B.C.E.

Aristotle was in agreement, writing: “Let there be a law that no deformed child be reared; but, on the ground of number of children, if the regular customs hinder any of those born being exposed, there must be a limit fixed to the procreation of offspring.”

Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, two moral and political philosophers of the 17th century, were both interested in the question, “How is society possible.” Although they differed in their views of the relative importance of nature and nurture, it is important to note that these differences were not absolute but, instead, a matter of emphases. Nevertheless, by starting with different assumptions on this matter, they came to different conclusions.

Thomas Hobbes 1588 - 1679

In Hobbes’ view, all men were, by their nature, selfish and sought to acquire whatever they needed to ensure their preservation. Since most men desire the same things, there would be constant conflict and strife that, unregulated by a strong centralized state that could punish us for our misdeeds, would lead to a “war of all against all.” In this “state of nature” life, Hobbes argued, would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” His solution was that men give up their rights to do anything they please and, instead, form a “social contract” with their fellow men that involves the creation of a strong government that regulates behavior. In a sense, since we will then no longer live in the fear that others might steal our goods or, in the extreme, take our lives, we give up our total freedom in order to be free enough to live peaceably.

John Locke 1632 - 1704

Locke, too, believed that some sort of social contract was important but, unlike Hobbes, he argued that men are by their nature, for the most part, cooperative creatures that are naturally drawn together. Moreover, Locke gave more importance to the environment, maintaining that when a child is born their mind is a tabula rasa – a “blank slate” – upon which life imprints its experiences, thereby affecting how we view the world.

Our Founding Fathers

If you have taken a government course and studied the debates surrounding the form our government should take, you probably know that the founding fathers argued considerably about the nature of man.

The Federalists – men such as James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Noah Webster, and Benjamin Rush – believed man to be, by their nature, irrational, treacherous and guided by passion, self-interest, insatiable avarice and ambition. Government, they argued, had to be strong and organized in a manner that would keep these inherent tendencies in check.

The Hobbesian influence should be apparent to you.

James Madison 1751 - 1836

As James Madison wrote in The Federalist, no. 51, “But what is government itself, but the greatest reflection on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary . . .”

Alexander Hamilton 1757 - 1804

And when Alexander Hamilton asked, in The Federalist, no. 15, “Why has government been instituted at all?, he answered “Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice.”

Noah Webster 1758 - 1843

Using the Federalist Party newspaper as his platform, Noah Webster, its editor wrotet: “Every person, moderately acquainted with human nature, knows that public bodies, as well as individuals, are liable to the influence of sudden and violent passions, under the operation of which, the voice of reason is silenced.”

Benjamin Rush 1746 - 1813

And as Benjamin Rush put the argument, “Nothing but a vigorous and efficient government can prevent their degenerating into savages, or devouring each other like beasts of prey.”

As can be seen, our founding fathers were leaning more toward Hobbes than Locke. But this also posed a problem: If men were, by their nature, predisposed to acting in an irrational, self-interested and treacherous manner to the extent that a strong government was essential, what about the leaders of men? Wouldn’t they, too, be predisposed to doing the same? How, then, can we hope to deal with what, by all accounts, is a serious problem?

Their solution, of course, was the notion of “the separation of powers.” The executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government were each designed to have separate, independent powers and responsibilities; they were to be co-equal entities – with each having oversight of the others – which is no trivial matter.

Biological Determinism

It should be clear, then, that our founding fathers – as did most American citizens – believed that, given their nature, men have certain tendencies or propensities to act certain ways. But remember, too, that most Americans during this period also believed that there exist biologically based differences in the character, intelligence, and capabilities of different categories of people. Some people, in their view, were simply biologically inferior – in particular, people of color and women (regardless of their color).

As mentioned previously, many then jumped to the conclusion that social inequalities based on race, sex, or class cannot be altered because they reflect the innate and inferior genetic endowments of the disadvantaged. That people at the bottom of society – those who do not “make it” according to societal standards are constructed of intrinsically inferior material, be it poor brains, bad genes, or whatever.

This was a time when people could be bought, whipped, and sold . . . with many justifying this by believing that these people were not human . . . And here, too, some of the greatest and most respected minds in the so-called civilized world shared this belief – which had devastating consequences for those thought of in this way.

Thomas Jefferson 1743 - 1826

Thomas Jefferson, for example, wrote, albeit tentatively: “I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstance, are inferior to the whites in the endowment both of body and mind.”

Noted philosophers in Europe voiced their opinions more forcefully:

Voltaire 1694 - 1778

Voltaire, one of the most famous French Enlightenment writer, historian, social critic and philosopher did not mince words when, referring to “Negroes,” he wrote: “Their round eyes, their flat nose, their lips which are always thick, their differently shaped ears, the wool on their head, the measure even of their intelligence establishes between them and other species of men prodigious differences. “If their understanding is not of a different nature from ours, it is at least greatly inferior. They are not capable of any great application or association of ideas, and seem formed neither in the advantages nor the abuses of our philosophy.”

David Hume 1711 - 1776

Voltaire’s contemporary, David Hume, who is generally regarded as the most important philosopher ever to write in English, also believed in the innate inferiority of non-white races: “I am apt to suspect the negroes and in general all the other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation . . .  Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction betwixt these breeds of men.” Note that Hume is not referring to negroes as a separate and distinct race, he refers to them as a separate species.

Monogeny and Polygeny

Take a moment to reflect upon this – a separate species – and that “there are four of five different kinds.”

You are probably not aware that during this era, there were two main competing theories concerning the creation of man. The first theory – the one you are of course familiar with – is called “monogeny” – the idea that all humans derived from a single source; perhaps Adam and Eve. There are, according to this theory, different ‘races” and they were believed to have declined, by different degrees, from Eden’s perfection. Whites, of course, were presumed to have declined “the least,” blacks, “the most.” Most of those who embraced this theory held that the differences between races, though developing gradually under the influence of climate, were now “fixed” and could not be reversed.

The theory of polygeny, however, abandoned scripture and held that human races were created separately – the descendants of different Adams – with God given inferior innate and immutable (unchanging) attributes. This doctrine was one of the first theories of largely American origin that won the attention and respect of European scientists, who referred to polygeny as the “American school” of anthropology.

Other species, of course, are not accorded “human rights.” If we decide that they are a different species – not human – we can consider them property and treat them however we wish . . .

It is no accident that a nation practicing slavery and expelling native inhabitants from their homeland would produce a theory that justified these actions . . .

Early Evidence to Support Inherent Biological Differences

Petrus Camper 1722 - 1789

Leading scientists of the time also paid heed to these expressions of racism and sought to provide scientific evidence in support of these views. Petrus Camper, for example, a Dutch physician, anatomist, physiologist, zoologist, anthropologist, paleontologist and a naturalist during the Age of Enlightenment believed that the careful measurement and comparative analysis of the “facial angle” of different races and species could indicate their rank ordering in nature.  After measuring the angles of hundreds of skulls, Camper concluded that modern humans range from 70 degrees to somewhere between 80 and 90 degrees in this measure and that higher angles characterize smaller faces tucked below a more bulging cranium – which is a clear sign of mental nobility.

Below is an illustration from Camper’s original work showing the increasing value for the facial angle of (left to right) an ape, an African, and a Grecian head. Looking at these three skulls, which one looks more closely related to the middle skull of the African male? The one to its left – the ape – or the one to its right – the Greek male? Remember, seeing can be deceiving and misleading.

Camper also provided an ordering of human races by facial angle – and in the usual direction of racist rankings of his day, with Africans at the bottom, Orientals in the middle, and Europeans on top. Camper’s “facial angle” was the first widely accepted measurement for comparing the skulls of different races and nationalities.

Not long thereafter, measurements of facial angles was replaced by simply calculating the size and weight of one’s brain with the inference that “the larger the brain, the more intelligent and superior the individual.”

Samuel G. Morton 1799 - 1851

Much of this data was collected and presented by George Samuel Morton, arguably the most famous anthropologist of his era. Morton believed that a ranking of races could be established objectively by physical characteristics of the brain. Believing that the cranial cavity of a human skull provides a faithful measure of the brain it once contained, Morton set out to rank races by the average sizes of their brains. To do so, he collected hundreds of skulls representing the different groupings previously identified by anthropologists. Then, he filled the cranial cavity, first, with sifted white mustard seed, poured the seed back into a graduated cylinder and measured the skull’s volume in cubic inches. Since the seeds didn’t pack well and led to inconsistent results, he later switched to one-eighth-inch-diameter led shot. On the basis of his measurements Morton announced, to much fanfare, that his results confirmed the theory that large differences existed between men of different nationalities and, moreover, that these differences in cranial capacity indicated the superiority of Caucasians – white people. Following Caucasians, in descending order of volume, were those identified as Mongolian, Malay, Native American and last, at the bottom, Negro.

Louis Agassiz 1807 - 1873

Louis Agassiz, the founder and director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, was the leading spokesperson for polygeny in America and he steadfastly believed that Morton’s data supported the idea of separate creations and, along with it, inherent differences in capabilities. “The brain of the negro,” Agassiz wrote, “is that of the imperfect brain of a 7 month’s infant in the womb of a White.”

Josiah Nott 1804 - 1873

After Morton died in 1851, Josiah Nott, MD, a self-proclaimed “racial theorist” and slave owner in Alabama, prepared two textbooks with George Gliddon highlighting Morton’s findings and proclaimed it the “authoritative” work of racial science. Touring the south, Nott delivered a series of – in his own words – “lectures on niggerology” which were intended to prevent interbreeding which, in his view, would lead to the extinction of the white race.  As you might guess, Nott’s views were well received. In a letter to Morton in 1847, Nott writes, “My Niggerology, so far from harming me at home, has made me a greater man than I ever expected to be – I am the big gun of the profession here.”

There is, of course, no argument against the fact that during the Antebellum period in the south, the identification of people of African descent – whether slave or freeman – as being inferior to whites provided justification for that “peculiar institution” known as slavery. Caricatures of the “child-like” Sambo or Jim Crow character – the happy, dancing darky – appeared in nearly all forms of popular culture. We shall have occasion to revisit this in Unit 6. But understand that other categories of people were identified as biologically inferior as well: Native-Americans, the Chinese, the Irish, the Italians, the Jews and, of course, women.

Paul Broca 1824 - 1880

Paul Broca, the leading French anthropologist of his era whose “craniological” studies were treated as authoritative, weighed the brains of both men and women and found, unsurprisingly due to differences in overall stature, that the brains of men, on average, exceeded the weight of the brains of women by roughly 15%. He did find one woman’s brain considerably larger than the average man’s brain but as Broca noted, she had killed her husband and was therefore not representative of the fairer sex!

Gustave Le Bon 1841 - 1931

The founder of the field of social psychology, Gustave Le Bon used Broca’s data to support his position on women: “In the most intelligent races, as among the Parisians, there are a large number of women whose brains are closer in size to those of gorillas than to the most developed male brains.  This inferiority is so obvious that no one can contest it for a moment; only its degree is worth discussion . . . “All psychologists who have studied the intelligence of women, as well as poets and novelists, recognize today that they represent the most inferior forms of human evolution and that they are closer to children and savages than to an adult, civilized man.  They excel in fickleness, inconstancy, absence of thought and logic, and incapacity to reason.  Without doubt there exist some distinguished women, very superior to the average man,  but they are as exceptional as the birth of any monstrosity, as,  for example,  of a gorilla with two heads; consequently,  we may neglect them entirely.”

Cesare Lombroso 1835 - 1909

Other scientists and scholars, rather than relying upon rigorous statistical comparisons, relied instead on “visual data” to support their claims. Cesare Lombroso, an Italian criminologist, physician, and founder of the Italian School of Positivist Criminology argued that criminality was inherited, and that someone "born criminal" could be identified by physical (congenital) defects. These born criminals, he believed, represented a reversion to a primitive or subhuman type of person characterized by physical features reminiscent of apes, lower primates, and early humans. And you can “identify” these born criminals rather easily just by looking at them . . .

Here, for example, is a drawing from Lombroso’s major publication depicting one type of born criminals:

 

 

Popular Culture

It should come as no surprise that these ideas diffused into popular culture and, as a result, took root in much of the mindset of the citizenry.

Robert Louis Stevenson 1850 - 1894

Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic The Strange Case of Dr. Jeykll and Mr. Hyde, for example, published in 1886, was one such conduit of Lombroso’s ideas into the public realm.

Phrenology

But for thousands of ordinary citizens at the turn of the 19th century it was the "new science" - eventually to be redefined as a "pseudoscience" - of phrenology that reinforced the view that character and behavior were mostly a matter of biology.

Franz Joseph Gall 1758 - 1828

Founded by Franz Joseph Gall, a German neuroanatomist, physiologist, and pioneer in the study of the localization of mental functions, and popularized by his one-time assistant Johann Spurzheim, phrenology “took off” in the early 19th century. Gall believed that the brain was not a single solitary organ but, rather, was comprised of twenty-seven separate organs with each corresponding to different mental traits or abilities. These separate organs - or "faculties," as Gall called them - could be mapped onto the brain, as seen below. Among these faculties were such traits as combativeness, destructiveness, secretiveness, acquisitiveness, self-esteem, love of approbation, cautiousness, benevolence, veneration, conscientiousness, hope, wonder, wit, and spirituality.

Johann Spurzheim 1776 - 1832

Some phrenologists believed that these separate organs were like muscles and that the more you used a particular organ, the more it would grow in size, causing a “bump” to appear on your skull. Others believed that the strength – and therefore the size – of these organs were biologically “fixed at birth.”

Regardless of one’s position on this matter, thousands upon thousands of individuals flocked to their local craniologist to get he bumps on the head read, much like an individual attending a carnival to get their palm read!

Cartoons were published . . .

Popular books were published . . .

People had their bumps read at State Fairs . . . (or in the Archives for the History of American Psychology)

. . . while other famous literary figures as Charlotte Bronte (the author of Jane Eyre), Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter), Edgar Allan Poe (The Raven), Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist, Great Expectations), Herman Melville (Moby Dick), Walt Whitman (poet, essayist, and critic), and Mark Twain ( The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, as well as other biting commentaries on life) had their heads examined by phrenologists.

Louis Allen Vaught 1859 - ?

It was only a matter of time before someone else thought to capitalize on the notion that you could tell a great deal about a person just by looking at him or her by selling as easy to read do-it-yourself book. In 1902, Louis Allen Vaught self-published Vaught’s Practical Character Reader, charging subscribers one-dollar to receive “a book that tells and shows how to read character at sight.” The book, Vaught continues, is “Perfectly Reliable,” “the product of twenty-three year’s study, research, and professional practice” during which he conducted “at least fifty thousand examinations” to prove the truthfulness of his observations and “more than a million observations to confirm his examinations.” In his advertisement for his book he assures the potential subscriber that it is “For Practical Use Wherever you Meet People,” “Right to the Point – Not an Unnecessary Word in It,” that it is” Practical Beyond Telling,” and that it is “Indescribably Original.”

Actually, Vaught drew rather heavily upon the phrenological work of Franz Joseph Gall and Johann Spurzheim. As can be seen below, Vaught included a number of drawings that identified bumps on one's head as markers of one's character.

But he also focused attention of the general shape of the head, the face, the nose and the ears. Using his book as a guide, Vaught assured his readers that just by looking at the overall contours of a person's head, you can distinguish a “genuine father” from an “unreliable father” or a “genuine mother” from an “unreliable mother” or an “honest” person from one who is “deceitful.”

Similarly, Vaught that the shape of a person's ears and nose can be quite revealing . . .

And the bottom line, of course, is that this book will prevent you from making mistakes when you choose your mate. So remember, "Two Roman noses are surely too many in one family, especially in husband and wife."

 

Alexander Todorov Princeton University

Although there are no empirical studies that indicate a clear relationship between “how one looks” and various character traits and/or natural abilities and capabilities, this doesn’t mean that people don’t act as if such a relationship exists. Alexander Todorov, a professor of psychology at Princeton University, examines this in his recent book, Face Value: The Irresistible Influence of First Impressions. We will spend more time on this when we examine processes of social interaction in Unit 3, but note, for the moment, that “first impressions” are an integral part of these processes and they are greatly affected by how we interpret what we see. Here are three quick examples:

Which of these twins is more likely to have committed a violent crime? Quickly - choose one . . .

Most people say that the twin on the right is more likely to have committed a violent crime. But as it turns out, these are not twins, these are exact duplicate pictures of the same individual with one change: the photo on the right has been resized 10 percent larger . . .

How about this one: Who would you vote for in time of war? Quickly, the one on the left (A) or the one on the right (B)?

Most people choose individual A - the one on the left. They say that faceA looks stronger and that face B seems too soft.

Last one: Which of these two people do you think is more competent?

The majority choose the person on the left . . . why? They are both smiling. What is it about his demeanor? Is that he is looking straight forward while the head of the man on the right is tilted downward?

As I said, we will come back to this later.

But perhaps you have noticed that in the discussion of phrenology and Vaught’s character analysis the “clientele, so to speak, were typically from the educated and professional class and, in the long run, this was all pretty harmless. Yes, folks may have been bilked out of their money, but no one’s civil liberties were being challenged or under attack.

Unfortunately, this all changed with the emergence and steady growth of the eugenics movement both here and abroad.

The Eugenics Movement

I assume that you all recognize this man. And you have heard that, among other things, he wanted to "purify" the Aryan race. And you might even think that this ideas was original to him. Guess again . . . At the conclusion of World War II, the American Military Tribunal at Nuremberg indicted Major General Karl Brandt, for conspiracy to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity. Brandt had begun the war as Hitler’s personal physician and quickly became the most important medical authority in the Third Reich and among the specific charges were performing medical experiments – i.e., sterilizations – upon healthy but defenseless death camp inmates against their will and implementing a “euthanasia” program in which the sick, the aged, the mentally ill, and the members of racial minorities were secretly murdered in gas chambers.

In his defense, Brandt introduced into evidence a book published in Munich in 1925 that had strongly advocated and justified the elimination of inferior peoples. Brandt presented excerpts from the book that illustrated three interrelated themes: First, that the survival of human society takes precedence over the existence of any individual human being. Second, that social welfare programs should therefore be terminated, for they misdirect society’s scarce resources toward the sustenance of unfit and incompetent individuals. And third, that the state should implement a program of destroying sickly infants and sterilizing defective adults and members of inferior races who are of no value to the community.

Most people, I would think, would readily agree with the first theme: the survival of society is certainly more important that the survival of any one individual. And although I am not among them, there are many today who would agree with the second theme - staunch conservatives have and continue to make this argument. But I do hope that no one today endorses the third theme . . .

So, what was this book, and why would Brandt believe that it would help his case? The book was The Passing of the Great Race, written by Madison Grant, one of the key players in the eugenics movement in the United States.

Here, Grant writes,

“It would not be a matter of great difficulty to secure a general consensus of public opinion as to the least desirable, let us say, ten percent of the community. [Note: this would amount to 15 million people] When this unemployed and unemployable human residuum has been eliminated, together with the great mass of crime, poverty, alcoholism, and feeble-mindedness associated therewith, it would be easy to consider the advisability of further restricting the perpetuation of the then remaining least valuable types. By this method mankind might ultimately become sufficiently intelligent to deliberately choose the most vital and intellectual strains to carry on the race.”

“This is a practical, merciful, and inevitable solution of the whole problem, and can be applied to an ever widening circle of social discards, beginning always with the criminal, the diseased, and the insane, and extending gradually to types which may be called weaklings rather than defectives, and perhaps ultimately to worthless race types.”

Reading this today you might think that it is simply the ravings of a lone individual, venting off steam. But the reception given Grant's book was astounding. The vast majority of popular and scholarly opinion was impressed and convinced by Grant’s book.

Newspapers such as the New York Times, New York Herald, New York Sun, and Philadelphia Ledger published glowing accounts.

Equally favorable reviews appeared in the popular periodicals The Literary Digest, Publishers Review, and The Nation.

Reviews in scholarly journals – the Yale Review, Science, Nature, Man, The Geographical Review, and The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science – were no less enthusiastic.

The book became a best seller. Originally published in October, 1916, the book needed to be reprinted in two months time. A second revised edition appeared in 1918. A third edition was published in 1920. One year later, in 1921, a fourth edition, containing a “Documentary Supplement,” appeared. This was reprinted twice in 1922, twice in 1923, and then once in 1924, 1926, 1930, 1932, and 1936.

Theodore Roosevelt 1858 - 1919

On October 30, 1916, just weeks after the publication of Grant's book, his close friend Theodore Roosevelt wrote, “This book is a capital book; in purpose, in vision, in grasp of the facts of our people most need to realize. It shows an extraordinary range of reading and a wide scholarship. It shows a habit of singular serious thought on the subjects of most commanding importance. It shows a fine fearlessness in assailing the popular and mischievous sentimentalities and attractive and corroding falsehoods which few men dare assail. It is the work of an American scholar and gentleman; and all Americans should be sincerely grateful to you for writing it.”

And Hitler, after reading Grant's book, said, “This book is my Bible.”

But let's go back and trace the emergence of the eugenics movement and how it found fertile soil in which to grow.

Francis Galton 1822 - 1911

The word "eugenics" was coined in 1883 by Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin.  He took the word from the Greek root meaning “good in birth” or “noble in heredity.”  He intended it to denote the “science” of improving human stock by giving “the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable.” According to Galton and those who embraced his ideas, some people were “born well” while others were biologically deficient – they were born “feebleminded” and were the main cause of the social problems – poverty, crime, prostitution, alcoholism – that plagued society. And the solution was as simple as it was clear: encourage those who were born well to reproduce in large numbers, and prevent the feebleminded from doing so, preferably through sterilization. And the idea had a certain resonance. Eugenics Associations cropped up in countries on every continent throughout the world.

Eugenics movements flourished in both Weimar and Nazi Germany, in both Calvin Coolidge’s America and Lenin’s Russia, in both Fascist Italy and Communist China, and in Social-Democratic-Welfare States in Scandinavia.

Adherents included progressive liberals and conservatives, Communists, socialists, fascists, and anarchists, the working-class and the financial elite, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and atheists, White Supremacists and Black intellectuals, old-fashioned traditional Women and the New Woman Feminists. They were most certainly strange bed-fellows, to say the least.

That people of such different backgrounds, of such different interests, converged on this idea speaks volumes. This is one powerful idea.

Eugenics in the United States

Circumstances in the United States made it particularly receptive to eugenic ideas. There were four main areas of concern.

First was the increasing crime rate and high cost of keeping “habitual” criminals in prison. The publication in 1877 of The Jukes”: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease, and Heredity by the sociologist Richard Dugdale set the tone.

Beginning with six prisoners, Dugdale eventually traced the lives of this family over five generations and found a large number of paupers, criminals, habitual thieves, prostitutes, syphilitics, and illegitimate children.

He described the Jukes’ homes as “log huts and hovels which form hot beds where human maggots are spawned” and reported that “The distinctive tendency of the Juke family is harlotry and bastardy.”

More important, Dugdale reported that these “ner’do wells” had cost the state “over a million and a quarter dollars” the last 75 years. Just think of how much could have been saved, he asked his readers, if we had nipped this family in the bud at the first sign of their biological degeneration.

The book went through seven editions in the twenty-five years following 1877.

The second area of concern was the constant flood of immigration to our shores.

In 1907, the United States Senate, under intense pressure from groups like the Immigration Restriction League, formed the Dillingham Commission to study the origins and consequences of immigration. In a series of reports published in 1910 and 1911, the Commission claimed that a crucial shift in European immigration patterns corresponded to the rise of social and economic problems in the United States.

Before the 1880s, according to the Commission, most migrants to the United States had arrived from northern and western Europe. After the 1880s, however, “inferior” migrants from places in southeastern Europe, such as Austria-Hungary, Russia, Italy, Turkey, Lithuania, Romania, and Greece, increasingly dominated European immigration.

For many, the issue was not simply that these newcomers would work for lower wages, but also that, due to their poor genetic constitution, they brought pestilence and disease that would quickly spread through the population. In 1900, for example, public officials branded the Chinese in San Francisco health menaces after an outbreak of bubonic plague, just as in previous times some nativists associated Irish immigrants with a cholera outbreak. Then in 1916, newspapers and some public health officials smeared Italian immigrants residing along the East Coast by blaming them for the polio epidemic that terrorized Americans during the long and fearful summer.  In th drawing to the left, you can see members of the New York Municipal Board of Health armed with a bottle of carbolic acid to fight off cholera arriving in the port of New York, 1883.

And as seen below, Lifebuoy Soap marketed their product as an essential prophylactic to ward off diseases spread by immigrants as they mingle with otherwise healthy Americans in crowds, or by immigrant street peddlers passing germs they leave on money.

In the end, the Dillingham Commission's 42-volume report placed the blame for the nation's problems on these new migrants and recommended that the federal government use literacy tests to prevent poor and uneducated immigrants from entering the nation and causing further social unrest.

The third area of concern were the declining birth rates of "good" American citizens which, when coupled with the increased number of children born in immigrant families, came to be referred to as "Race Suicide."

Francis A. Walker 1840 - 1897

As Francis A. Walker, the President of M.I.T. and 1st President of the American Economic Association put it, first, native Americans did not want to bring children into a society degraded by filthy, ignorant foreigners who were “unfit to be members of any decent community;” and second, they were afraid that their children would be obliged to compete in the marketplace with the “vast hordes of foreign immigrants” who were all too willing to work for inhuman wages.

The sociologist Edward A. Ross, in a speech to the American Academy of Political and Social Science titled “The Causes of Race Superiority,” was even more adament:

Edward A. Ross 1866 - 1951

“There is no bloodshed, no violence, no assault of the race that waxes [increases] upon the race that wanes [decreases]. The higher race quietly and unmurmuringly eliminates itself rather than endure individually the bitter competition it has failed to ward off from itself by collective action. The working classes gradually delay marriage and restrict the size of the family as the opportunities hitherto reserved for their children are eagerly snapped up by the numerous progeny of the foreigner. The prudent, self-respecting natives first cease to expand, and then, as the struggle for existence grows sterner and the outlook for their children darker, they fail even to recruit [reproduce] their own numbers . . .” Moreover, Ross writes, without mincing words, that “ . . . twenty per cent” of eastern and southern European immigrants were “hirsute [hairy], low-browed, big-faced persons of obviously low mentality. In every face there was something wrong – lips thick, mouth coarse, upper lip too long, cheek bones too high, chin poorly formed, the bridge of the nose hollowed . . . there were so many sugar-loaf heads, moon-faces, slit-mouths, lantern-jaws, and goose-bill noses that one might imagine a malicious jinn had amused himself by casting human beings in a set of skew-molds discarded by the Creator.”

Theodore Roosevelt had something to say about this as well. In hundreds of articles and speeches he attributed America’s success to its good Anglo-Saxon blood. He spoke constantly of the country’s “race destiny,” which he thought was threatened by both the influx of inferior immigrants  from southern and eastern Europe and the failure of old-stock Americans to reproduce at an adequate rate. During his presidency (1901-1909), Roosevelt repeatedly called for curbs on immigration.

In fact, Roosevelt thought that Americans of English blood were involved in a “warfare of the cradle” with lesser races. It is obvious, he wrote, “that if in the future racial qualities are to be improved, the improving must be wrought mainly by favoring the fecundity of the worthy type and frowning on the fecundity of the unworthy type.” Old stock American families, Roosevelt believed, had the “duty” to produce four-to-six children. In his view, both men and women of good stock who chose not to have children were “race criminals.”

The final main concern was simply referred to as the “Menace of the Feebleminded" – mental defectives lacking not only in intelligence but also in self-control which is the basis of morality. Unable to curb their sexual desires, they reproduce recklessly.

If men and women of good stock are only having two or three children and these defectives are having eight to ten, well, do the math: if nothing is to be done, society will be swamped with feebleminded individuals who will be the future sources of problems.

As it happened, poor white women were targeted more so than men.

In his address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1901, Amos Butler, the Secretary of the Board of State Charities argued that
                       
“One perverted feeble-minded woman can spread throughout the community an immoral pestilence which will affect the homes of all classes, even the most intelligent and refined.”

This was met with widespread agreement – and more.

Lewis Terman 1877 - 1956

Lewis Terman, a staunch eugenicist and psychologist at Stanford, argued that “every feebleminded woman is a potential prostitute.” In his view, these women had become pregnant out of wedlock because they could “pass for normal in almost any community,” and consequently “many untrained persons might overlook their mental deficiency” and “unsuspectingly be tricked into sexual intercourse.” These women, Terman argued, must be identified and moved out of the general population.

Walter E. Fernald, the superintendent of the Massachusetts School for the Feebleminded agreed.

Walter E. Fernald 1859 - 1924

“The high-grade [moron] female group is the most dangerous class. They are not capable of becoming desirable or safe members of the community. . . . They are certain to become sexual offenders and to spread venereal disease or to give birth to degenerate children. . . . The segregation of this class should be rapidly extended until all not adequately guarded at home are placed under strict quarantine.” As shall be seen, nearly every state in the union built homes for the feebleminded for this purpose.

By the turn of the twentieth century the new field of eugenics had attracted many of our best and brightest scientists and scholars who were alarmed by what they considered to be a decline in the hereditary quality of the American people. And they believed that this developing field offered viable solutions. Toward that end, eugenics organizations and associations were created.

Using a multi-disciplinary perspective, the new field was designed to take all of the latest, best and relevant knowledge known to science and put it to work.

As indicated in the poster below, “Like a Tree Eugenics Draws its Materials From Many Sources and Organizes Them Into An Harmonious Entity.”

Charles Davenport 1866 - 1944

In 1904 Charles Davenport, first an instructor in zoology at Harvard, and then an assistant professor at the newly founded University of Chicago, persuaded the Andrew Carnegie Institution of Washington to establish a station for the experimental study of eugenics, under his directorship, at Cold Spring Harbor.  His salary the first year was $3,500 and was raised to $4,000 the following year––the equal then of the best paid professorships in the United States.

David Starr Jordon 1851 - 1931

Two years later, the American Breeders Association, an organization that until that time focused primarily on breeding livestock, created a committee on eugenics. Chaired by David Starr Jordon, the President of Stanford University, the committee had such notable people as the inventor Alexander Graham Bell, the plant breeder Luther Burbank, the Harvard biologist William Castle, and Charles Davenport as founding members. Ten sub-committees were also established, including one on “Sterilization and Other Means of Eliminating Defective Germ Plasm,” chaired by Harry Laughlin.

Alexander G. Bell 1847 - 1922

Luther Burbank 1849 - 1926

William Castle 1867 - 1962

Char. Davenport 1866 - 1944

Harry Laughlin 1880 - 1943

The main goal of the Committee on Eugenics was “to emphasize the value of superior blood and the menace to society of inferior blood” and to suggest “methods of improving the heredity of the family, the people, or the race.”

In 1910, the wife of the deceased railroad tycoon E. H. Harriman agreed to provide long-term support to ensure the continuation of eugenic research in the United States. Keeping Davenport at the helm, Harriman bought and donated 75 acres in Cold Spring Harbor as the site for the newly created Eugenics Record Office, and then provided roughly $20,000 a year for operating expenses.  

In 1918 she donated the entire installation to the Carnegie Institution of Washington with an additional endowment of $300,000, which brought the total of her eugenic patronage between 1910 and 1918 to more than half a million dollars. John D. Rockefeller provided the second largest source of support.

Davenport, of course, was elated, writing that he looked forward to the day when a woman would no more accept a man “without knowing his biological-genealogical history” than a stockbreeder would take “a sire for his colts or calves without pedigree. . . .”

“The most progressive revolution in history,” he continued, could be achieved if somehow “human matings could be placed upon the same high plane as that of horse breeding.”

Davenport hired and trained fieldworkers – both men and women – to collect family pedigrees to see if certain undesirable traits were passed down through the generations.

From his staff's collection of these family pedigrees, Davenport argued that patterns of heritability were evident in insanity, epilepsy, alcoholism, pauperism, criminality, sexual immorality and, above all, feeblemindedness – a catch-all term of the day used indiscriminately for what was actually a wide range of mental deficiencies.

A key problem, of course, was that the fieldworkers could only report what their interviewees told them so these “subjective” accounts were always suspect. It is not hard to imagine that some folks would prefer not revealing the deep dark secrets of their family, past or present. As a result, eugenicists sought a more “objective” measure that could be used, not only to trace character traits over generations, but also to identify the feebleminded in their midst.

Alfred Binet 1857 - 1911

As it happened, the first "intelligence test," under the direction of the French government, was published and revised in 1908 by Alfred Binet (with Theodore Simon)

Henry Goddard 1866 - 1957

Traveling through France that year, Henry H. Goddard, the director of the Training School at Vineland, New Jersey met with Binet and, after some discussion, decided to administer a revised version of the test back at Vineland. Two years later, in 1910, Goddard presented a new classification system at the meetings of the American Association for the Study of the Feebleminded. If, as an adult, you score indicates that you have the mental age of a child between the ages 1 and 2, technically, you are an “idiot.” If, as an adult, you score indicates that you have the mental age of a child between the ages 3 and 7, technically, you are an “imbecile.” If, as an adult, you score indicates that you have the mental age of a child between the ages 8 and 12, technically, you are a “moron.”

Variations of intelligence tests emerged over the next decade. Lewis Terman, from Stanford, constructed what is still called the Stanford-Binet test. And these tests were used under a variety of circumstances to see whether this or that individual, based on their test score, was feebleminded. Courts, for example, often used them to decide whether someone arrested for petty crime should be sent to a facility for the feebleminded and, in extreme cases, as shall be seen, whether someone would be sterilized!

The advent of the United States entry into World War I sparked serious concern that so-called imbeciles and morons might either wish to join the armed forces or be drafted. In either case, no one believed that feebleminded people could be good soldiers and they might also put their fellow soldiers at risk.

Under the direction of the National Research Council (recently established by the National Academy of Sciences), by May of 1918 psychologists were administering tests to 200,000 men each month. By January 31, 1919 they had tested 1,726,966 men. Below is a picture of the First Company of Commissioned Psychologists, School for Military Psychology, Camp Greenleaf. The testing program was headed by Robert M. Yerkes, from Harvard University, and included Henry H. Goddard and Lewis Terman.

After the war, an extensive analysis of the results was conducted and published. The results were not encouraging.

The psychologists had transformed Binet’s oral tests for individual children into a battery of written tests for groups of adults. Included in the Army Alpha exam were tests of practical judgment, following directions, arithmetic word problems, a number series completion test, an analogies test, a test of disarranged sentences, and an information test consisting of things intelligent adults ought to know – I will come back to this in a moment. In its final form, the test took under an hour to administer.

Roughly one-quarter – 25.3%, or 436,922 men – were unable to “read and understand newspapers and write letters home.” More than half of these functional illiterates were native born. And the average “mental” age of the white draftee – and by implication, white males in the U.S. – was only 13.1 years – a score just barely above the twelve-year mental age limit that intelligence testers had been using for years to define feeblemindedness.

The Army tests appeared to indicate that the average Black male in the United States had the mental age of a ten-year-old, and many used this finding to justify their claims that blacks were inferior. The fact that the army’s northern blacks had far outscored southern blacks didn’t seem to matter, nor the fact that blacks from Illinois, New York, and Ohio had outscored whites from Mississippi, Kentucky, and Arkansas . . .

The important question, of course, is whether or not these tests are an accurate measure of intelligence. Upon careful inspection, it should be clear to you that the test questions used by the Army were more apt to measure one’s knowledge rather than their intelligence (for they are not the same thing). The fact that I am more “knowledgeable” about sociology than the entire class combined doesn’t make me more intelligent than either of you – I’ve been studying and teaching sociology for over 40 years! And at the same time, I have absolutely no knowledge about how my car works – all I can say is if it’s not working, it’s just broken – while you might be able to take a car apart and put it back together blindfolded. Does that make you more intelligent than I am?

The simple point is that one’s “knowledgeability” typically depends on their access to knowledge. Look at the actual test used by the Army below. (I have also included an elarged view of the first 15 questions to make them more easily viewed. As you read through the questions you will be sure to notice that the respondent is being tested about certain “facts.”

So . . . Who would be more likely to know that a Wyandotte is a kind of fowl? Someone living in an urban area or in a rural area? Have you ever heard of either Bud Fisher, Marguerite Clark or Rosa Bonhuer? Who is most likey to know that the phrase "Hasn't scratched yet" is used in advertising a cleanser. And who wouldbe more likely to know that emeralds are green, men or women? Later on in the test you are expected to know names, dates, and be able to know what a "scimitar" is (a sword) and to know what an "ampere" measures. Much here depends onhow many years of schooling one has.

And tests such as this were also used, as mentioned before, to determine whether someone who had committed a crime (or just looked suspicious) should be sent to a facility for the feebleminded – where they might be sterilized against their wishes – or sent to a prison.

As early as 1906, the American Breeders Association Committee on Eugenics set up a sub-committee charged with investigating “Sterilization and other means of eliminating defective germ plasm” as a solution to society’s ills, and as early as 1905 states began to approve legislation allowing the “compulsory sterilizations" of feebleminded individuals - here in the United States . . .

In fact, as we’ve seen throughout this episode, some of our “best and brightest” supported such drastic measures.

Theodore Roosevelt 1858 - 1919

In a letter written to Charles Davenport on January 3, 1913, Roosevelt wrote, “I agree with you . . . that society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind . . . Some day, we will realize that the prime duty, the inescapable duty, of the good citizen of the right type, is to leave his or her blood behind him in the world; and that we have no business to permit the perpetuation of citizens of the wrong type.”

Margaret Sanger 1879 - 1966

Margaret Sanger, the American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse who opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, was also a product of her times. In her book, The Pivot of Civilization published in 1922, she writes: “Every feeble-minded girl or woman of the hereditary type, especially of the moron class, should be segregated during the reproductive period. Otherwise, she is almost certain to bear imbecile children, who in turn are just as certain to breed other defectives. The male defectives are no less dangerous. Segregation carried out for  one or two generations would give us only  partial control of the problem. Moreover, when  we realize that each feeble-minded person is a potential source of an endless progeny of defect, we prefer the policy of immediate sterilization, of making sure that parenthood is absolutely prohibited to the feeble-minded.”

As difficult as it might be to imagine today and as harsh as this sounds, public opinion was firmly in support of sterilization. Look, for example, at these State Voting Records on Sterilization Bills and the Number of Sterilizations, 1905 – 1921.

The overwhelming majority of these votes are not even close – these are landslides.

But careful examination of this table reveals other interesting things. Yes, the margins in favor of the legislation were quite large – there is only one vote in the House and one in the Senate that could be said to be close. But on six separate occasions legislation that passed both the House and the Senate were vetoed by the Governor. And if you look at the actual number of sterilizations that were performed, outside of California the numbers are rather small. And there is one more thing: if you examine the list of states where such legislation was introduced you should notice that there are no Southern states on the list.

Eugenicists correctly reasoned that the Governors’ vetoes and small numbers of sterilizations performed were the result of constitutional issues that needed to be addressed and resolved. Concerned that many of the laws on the books were flawed, Harry Laughlin saw the need to create a "Model Law" which could withstand a test of constitutional scrutiny, clearing the way for future sterilization operations.

With the support of the Eugenics Record Office, the Commonwealth of Virginia adopted a statute closely based on Laughlin's model that authorized the compulsory sterilization of the intellectually disabled.

In 1924, the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, filed a petition to its Board of Directors to sterilize Carrie Buck, an 18-year-old patient at the institution who, it was claimed, had a mental age of 9. Carrie’s mother, Emma, also lived in the State Colony, having been judged feebleminded years earlier.

The case would wind its way through the courts from 1924 until 1927 when it came before the Supreme Court of the United States. First, after The Board of Directors issued an order for the sterilization of Buck, her guardian appealed the case to the Circuit Court of Amherst County, which sustained the decision of the Board.  The case then moved to the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia where the prior decision allowing the sterilization of Carrie was sustained. Finally, the case was heard by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1927.

During the court hearings, evidence was presented in support of the argument that not only Carrie and her mother Emma were feebleminded, but that Vivian, Carrie’s seven-month old infant daughter, was feebleminded as well. In addition, the Superintendent of the Virginia Colony testified that members of the Buck family “belong to the shiftless, ignorant, and worthless class of anti-social whites of the South.”

In an eight-to-one decision (again, not a close vote), the Court ruled that a state statute permitting compulsory sterilization of the unfit, including the intellectually disabled, “for the protection and health of the state,” did not violate the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Oliver W. Holmes 1841 - 1935

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, then in his eighties and the most celebrated jurist in America, wrote the majority opinion: “We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives [he is referring here to soldiers drafted during World war I].  It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices . . . in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence . . . “It is better for all 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. The principal that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. [And then, in what is arguably one of the most infamous Supreme Court quotations] Three generations of imbeciles is enough.”

After the Buck v. Bell decision in 1927, dozens of states added new sterilization statutes, as seen from the following map which presents information up through January 1, 1935:

As can be seen, by 1935 nearly every state of the union had laws allowing the compulsory sterilization of individuals who were considered, by their nature, to be mentally defective and a burden to society. A number of these states – in black – had legislation pending at this time; most were approved within a few years, just as other states – in white – introduced and passed legislation within the next few years. (Louisiana is an interesting counter-example. Every two years the legislature submitted sterilization bills, and each time they were defeated. Louisiana had large numbers of Catholic voters and the bills were opposed by the Catholic Church. In his encyclical of 1930, Pope Pius XI publicly denounced eugenics.)

This figure also indicates that as of January 1, 1935, 21,539 sterilizations had been performed. By the 1970s that number would increase to more than 100,000

How can we account for the apparent ease through which these laws were passed and the apparent consensus that the sterilization of people deemed to be defective was a reasonable act?

"The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree" - Popular Views of Eugnics

Perhaps most important, these ideas resonated with the general public and seeped into popular culture.

All of you, I’m sure, have heard the proverb that "The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree."

It is a piece of conventional folk wisdom that originated in Germany in the 16th century and made its way to the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. Ralph Waldo Emerson used the proverb in a letter to his aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, dated 22 December 1839, with the prefatory “and as men say apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” which suggests that it was already a popular saying by that time.

Today, we find the proverb in seventeen different languages. There is clearly something about it that strikes a responsive chord – and it highlights the notion that genetics is crucial in determining who one comes to be. (You are probably aware of other similar proverbs, Chip off the old block and Like father, like son).

This notion – coupled with the teachings of eugenics – could be found nearly everywhere in our system of education as well as in popular culture.

In the Handbook for Scoutmasters, for example, published by the Boy Scouts of America scoutmasters are informed that, “Heredity of the boy is a heritage which accompanies him into life. It is a fixed influence limiting the boy’s possibilities. The Scoutmaster cannot change it.” “Misfits are among life’s most common tragedies . . . The annual loss to society amounts into billions . . .”

Published in 1914, George William Hunter’s Civic Biology: Presented in Problems, was the high school text used by John T. Scopes in his classes that led to his prosecution for teaching evolution in a Tennessee public school (The Scopes Monkey Trial). Although objections were raised about evolution, no one appeared to object to the textbook’s horrific portrayal of genetically misfit feebleminded individuals:

“Hundreds of [feebleminded] families exist today, spreading disease, immorality and crime to all parts of this country. The cost to society of such families is very severe. Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other plants and animals, these families have become parasitic on society. They not only do harm to others by corrupting, stealing or spreading disease, but they are actually protected and cared for by the state out of public money. Largely for them the poor-house and the asylum exist. They take from society, but they give nothing in return. They are true parasites.” “If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race.”

In 1914, 44 American colleges and Universities offered courses in eugenics; by 1928, the number had increased to 376. Eugenics was endorsed in over ninety percent of high school biology textbooks.  The majority of American colleges and universities - including Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Brown, Wisconsin, Northwestern, and Berkeley - offered well-attended courses in eugenics, or genetics courses that incorporated eugenic material.

In his best selling textbook Heredity and Environment in the Development of Men (1915), Edwin G. Conklin, a biologist at Princeton and member of the National Academy of Sciences, wrote, “There is probably no other subject of such vast importance to mankind as the knowledge of and the control over heredity and development. Within recent years the experimental study of heredity and development has led to a new epoch in our knowledge of these subjects, and it does not seem unreasonable to suppose that in time it will produce a better breed of men.”

Information concerning eugenics was also spread throughout the United States at the various assemblies sponsored by the Chautauqua Circuit, an adult education and social movement in the United States that was highly popular in rural America during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

It brought entertainment and culture for the whole community, with speakers, teachers, musicians, showmen, preachers, and specialists of the day that covered a variety of subjects. The Chautauqua experience was critical in stimulating thought and discussion on important political, social and cultural issues of the day.

The program would be presented in tents pitched “on a well-drained field near town” and, several days, the Chautauqua would fold its tents and move on.

At its peak in the mid-1920s, circuit Chautauqua performers and lecturers appeared in more than 10,000 communities in 45 states to audiences totaling 45 million people. Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was quoted as saying that Chautauqua is “the most American thing in America.”

The topic of eugenics appeared in nearly every program. Extremely popular were performances of Percy MacKay’s critically acclaimed three-act-play, Tomorrow, billed as “A Wonderful Drama Dealing with the Foremost Problem of the Day – Eugenics.”

Albert E. Wiggam 1871 - 1957

Equally popular were lectures presented by Albert E. Wiggam. A best selling author proclaiming the importance of eugenic thinking, Wiggam referred to eugenics as the “new religion” whose time had come, citing Biblical sources to support his view. In 1917 alone, Wiggam delivered 86 speeches on eugenics on the Chautauqua circuit.

Another vehicle through which the general public eas educated about eugenics were the State Fairs held throughout the country.

Nearly each one had Eugenic Exhibits that focused on the dangers of biological defectives weakening society.

Eugenicists also wanted to “reward” those who are biologically “fit” and, toward that end, sponsored both “Better Baby” and “Fitter Family” contests.

“The time has come,” a contest brochure explained, “when the science of human husbandry must be developed, based on the principles now followed by scientific agriculture, if the better elements of our civilization are to dominate or even survive.”

Contestants had to provide an examiner with the family's eugenic history.  All family members had to submit to a medical examination – including a Wasserman test and a psychiatric assessment – and take an intelligence test.

By the 1920s requests for help with such contests came from more than 40 sponsors a year.

Here are photos of baby contestants, and some winners of the extra-large, large, and medium, family competitions, along with a picture of the medal you won.

By the way: if you did win this award your picture would be on the front page of the local newspaper for all to see. Do you think that this would increase your access to local opportunities and resources?

There are still other ways that the public received information that reinforced the prevailing view that feeblemindedness posed a serious threat to society.

In what has been collectively referred to as the “White Trash” studies, eugenicists have published a series of books that trace the dysgenic backgrounds of various families.

Charles Davenport – who you remember was the director of the Eugenics Record Office – published The Nam Family: A Study in Cacogenics in 1912 with Arthur Estabrook. As seen below, the authors included photographs of family members that portrayed them as  . . . well, different from the good citizens of the United States.

That same year, Henry H. Goddard published The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeblemindedness. The book was reprinted eleven timesand appeared as a "Book of the Month" selection. Its story would be used in scientific textbooks, court cases, political speeches, public exhibits, and popular magazines. Other similar stuies were to follow.

Arthur H. Estabrook 1885 - 1973

After completing the study of the Nam family with Davenport, Arthur Estabrook conductedand published two additional studies. First, he revisited the Jukes family originally studied by Dugdale back in 1877. He found little if any change in their living conditions. His next book, Mongrel Virginians: A Scientific Study of Racial Intermixture as it Developed in the "Win" Tribe inVirginia - A Statement of Fact from Eugenical and Sociological Points of View, analyzed a family with white, Indian, and Negro blood intermingled.

As popular as these books were, they were directed at specialists in the field and their influence paled in comparison to the impact that was achieved by works of fiction that caught the public eye.

Erskine Caldwell 1903 - 1987

Tobacco Road, published by Erskine Caldwell in 1932, was named one of the Modern Library's 100 best novels of the twentieth century. Caldwell was a member of the American Eugenics Society and Tobacco Road was based on his father’s eugenic study of a Georgian family, the Bunglers. The novel reinforces the notion that both moral and intellectual deficiencies are genetically inherited. The Lesters –patterned after the Bunglers – are inherently feebleminded, lazy, irresponsible, immoral, and beyond help. They are deemed eugenically unfit and the novel makes the case that they should not be allowed to reproduce.

Tobacco Road resonated with Depression-era readers concerned about the issue of social welfare and the term “tobacco road” came to signify where poor moral degenerates lived. Even more striking than the sales of the novel, Tobacco Road opened on Broadway just one year after its publication and ran for more than seven years, through 3,182 performances. When it closed in 1941, it had become the longest-running play in the history of the Broadway stage up to that time. After closing on Broadway, road shows took the play to cities throughout the nation. And there was still more: as the Broadway show closed, the long-awaited movie version hit the big screen . . .

And then even more: the portrayal of feebleminded white trash families became even more popular and reached a larger receptive audience through the publication of the comic strip, Li"l Abner. At its peak, the daily happenings of a fictional clan of hillbillies in the impoverished mountain village of Dogpatch, USA was read daily by 60 million Americans in over 900 newspapers – at a time when the U.S. population was only 180 million!

Li’l Abner, a naïve, simpleminded, gullible and sweet-natured hillbilly, lived in a ramshackle log cabin with his Mammy and Pappy Yokum.   Pappy, a turnip farmer who never worked, was illiterate, dull-witted, gullible and so lazy, he didn't even bathe himself, while Mammy, pint-sized and corncob pipe-smoking, was the bare knuckle "champion" of the town and leader of both the Yokum clan and the town of Dogpatch.

Li’l Abner’s primary goal in life was evading the marital designs of Daisy Mae Scragg, the virtuous, voluptuous, barefoot member of the Yokums blood feud enemies — the Scraggs, her bloodthirsty, semi-evolved kinfolk. When they eventually did tie the knot it was a major media event - was on the front cover of Life Magazine, Time, and Newsweek

Dogpatch was filled with all sorts of characters – each an example of some degree of feeblemindedness. One that you might have heard of was Sadie Hawkins, “the homeliest gal in the hills.” Her father, a prominent resident of Dogpatch, was worried about Sadie living at home for the rest of his life, so he decreed the first annual Sadie Hawkins Day, a foot race in which all the unmarried women pursued the town's bachelors, with marriage the mandatory consequence if they caught someone. Life magazine reported in 1939 that over 200 colleges were holding Sadie Hawkins Day events and many such events continue to this day – on November 13th of each year – although marriage is no longer mandatory . . .

And, as you might expect, there was a Broadway production and two movie versions of Li'l Abner, one in 1940 and the second, a musical, in 1959. Then, in 1962, The Beverly Hillbillies began its ten-year run on television.

It is also the case that, beginning in 1936, a new comic strip hero was introduced, Dick Tracy, which ran side-by-side with Li'l Abner. Tracy was a “true, red-blooded American hero” – a detective who brought criminal gangsters to justice. many of whom were biologically defective.

Chester Gould, the author, drew upon popular eugenics concepts in the creation of of his criminal characters. He was quite taken with simplistic biological explanations of criminality and he often used biological signs that marked criminals in outrageously obvious ways. As he put it, he created these characters “so that anybody can look at the strip and know right away who’s the villain.”

Legions of fans followed Tracy’s relentless pursuit of “Steve the Tramp,” who has the flat cranium, hairy body, bull-like neck, and thick frame of Lombroso’s criminal type, as well as other gangsters such as “Flattop Jones,” “Pruneface,” “Little Face Finny, M. Blank, Haf-and-Haf and, of course, “the Mole.”

There were numerous Dick Tracy films, the most recent in 1990 with Warren Beatty starring in the leading role.

I mentioned earlier that many who thought hard about eugenics and took it seriously were some of our best and brightest citizens. And they made for strange-bedfellows: adherents included progressive liberals and conservatives, Communists, socialists, fascists, and anarchists, the working-class and the financial elite, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and atheists, White Supremacists and Black intellectuals, old-fashioned traditional Women and the New Woman Feminists. So allow me to make this clear once more: that people of such different backgrounds, of such different interests, converged upon and shared these ideas speaks volumes.  Just think of how powerful these ideas must be.

One might say that there ideas were just “in the air” and that people are a product of their times. So, where are we now?

As mentioned earlier, the recent resurgence – or simply the new boldness and visibility – of strident white nationalists and white supremacist groups in the U.S. these past few years indicates that these issues are still with, just as the recent deaths of people of color at the hands of rogue authorities reminds us that lives hang in the balance.

These actions cannot be explained away as the actions of ill-bred, uneducated people.  Yes, some will no doubt fit that description. But don’t lose sight of the fact that public displays of nooses, which are typically viewed as racist acts, have been found hanging from trees at such prestigious college campuses as Duke University (2015), American University (2017), Kansas State University (2017), the University of Maryland (2017), University of South Alabama (2018), University of Illinois (2019), Stanford University (2019), Auburn University (2019) and Oregon Health & Science University (2019).

And during the last week of May in 2017 a noose was found at three locations at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. – one being the segregation exhibit at the National Museum of African-American History and Culture.

We also hear echoes of these ideas in current immigration debates, as well as the controversy over whether intelligence is genetically determined and whether significant immutable – resistant to change – differences exist between the two sexes and between different racial categories. And, with new advances in genetics and biotechnology, some say that a new “backdoor eugenics” has emerged.

It is important to note, however, that many who embrace the idea that peoples’ “inner worth” or “capabilities” are a reflection of their genetic endowment – or lack thereof – do not to act in a discriminatory manner. In a great many instances they apply the notion to their reproductive concerns. Type “designer babies” into Google and you will get roughly 600,000 hits. You will get  another 50,000 if you punch in “genetic enhancements.”

Time magazine ran a cover story on “The I.Q. Gene?” and although it had the good sense to pose it as a question rather than as reality – no such gene has ever been identified – many nevertheless believe it to be true. To see how far this can go, consider this ad taken out in the Princeton University School Newspaper. Consider, too, the fact that women have tried to put their eggs up for auction on ebay!

Although now defunct, from 1980 until 1990, many people flocked to “The Repository for Germinal Choice,” founded by Robert Graham, which made available – at a hefty price – the sperm of recipients of the Nobel Prize!

If interested, you can go “surfing for sperm” on the internet, with prices varying according to “quality.”   – as judged, by Fairfax Cryobank, for example, judges quality by educational attainment, with sperm from donors with doctorates at the top, undergraduate degrees next, and the simply “Family Solutions” at the lowest level.

I have spent a considerable amount of time discussing the various consequences that, over the long span of history, have been the result of thinking about the behavior of human beings from the standpoint of their genetic make up. And these ideas, which disproportionately victimize some categories of human beings rather than others, are still with us today.

Many still believe that current social inequalities based on race, sex, or class cannot be altered because they reflect the innate and inferior genetic endowments of the disadvantaged. They justify the current arrangements by arguing that people at the bottom of society—those who do not “make it” according to societal standards—are constructed of intrinsically inferior material, be it poor brains, bad genes, or whatever.

And this, of course, has enormous policy implications.

As shall be seen, I will argue throughout the course – especially in the units covering culture, prejudice and discrimination, poverty and inequality and social problems – that a sociological perspective can be a “corrective” to the biological approach.

What is a Human Being – Psychology

Psychologists, of course, also devote their attention to why people behave as they do. And since they, too, know how complicated and messy life is, they typically start with a simplified perspective that guides their thinking. They pick one piece of the puzzle and set about their work. And, as you might expect, they don’t all agree and don't all start with the same assumptions. They pick or build a perspective that they think will be most useful.

During the late 1800s, many now considered the pioneers of psychology, worked hard to create a new discipline based on the model used by the natural sciences. In so doing, they began to develop different theories: some are thinking about human beings only in so far as they are guided by instincts, others emphasize unconscious tendencies, some see human beings as learning machines, and still others, as influenced by various personality traits. They are not saying that people are nothing but one of the preceding categories; they know that each is simply a different angle of vision that could potentially contribute to a deepening of our understanding.

Human Beings are Bundles of Instincts

William James 1842 - 1910

William James, considered to be the father of American psychology, was greatly influenced by Charles Darwin and incorporated much of Darwin’s theory into his analysis of the mind. According to James, innate mental powers underlie human adaptation and learning. Among these adaptations are instincts which, he argued explain much of human behavior. He listed 37 instincts, including acquisitiveness, anger, clasping, cleanliness, constructiveness, crying, curiosity, emulation, fear of dark places, fear of noise, fear of strange animals, fear of strange men, hunting, imitation, jealousy, love, modesty, parental love, play, pugnacity, resentment, secretiveness, shame, shyness, smiling, sociability, sympathy, and walking. Although James’ major concern is the functioning of the mind; this is indicative of his interest in human nature. But he also believed that the environment was important and could either amplify, diminish, or overrule the expressions of instinctual behavior. Moreover, as can be seen from looking at his list of instinctual responses, many overlap (i.e., anger, pugnacity), while others seem to be contradictory (i.e., love, resentment). For James, then, different instincts are called upon in different circumstances – here is the environment at work.

Human Beings are Driven by Unconscious Motivations

Sigmund Freud 1856 - 1939

Compare this with Freud’s perspective, which placed tremendous emphasis on the unconscious mind, and one’s libido or sex drive. According to Freud, psychological development in childhood takes place in a series of fixed psychosexual stages – oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital. Serious difficulties experienced in these stages, particularly as a consequence of early childhood trauma, might lead to conflict and anxiety that could persist into adulthood as a neurosis. This theory is now considered to be quite controversial and there are many who believe that Freud fell victim to what we earlier called “Maslow’s Hammer,” the over reliance on one particular tool. But it is important to understand that Freud was not arguing that people are nothing but their unconscious mind, or that it developed in a vacuum. Early childhood experiences are, of course, dependent on one’s culture, social class, sex, and a whole host of other things that Freud knew were important. But his focus was on how these experiences affected the psyche—the internal, largely unconscious mind. He was looking at people only in so far as they were beings driven by unconscious motivations.

Human Beings are “Personality Traits”

Gordon Allport 1897 - 1967

Other psychologists, like Gordon Allport, think of human beings as bundles of personality traits. These traits are not fixed, they range along a continuum, such as introversion – extroversion, stability – instability, agreeableness – disagreeableness, and openness – rigidity. Moreover, these traits are fluid and dynamic, changing over time and responsive to particular circumstances. Equally important, a person’s behavior is not the result of any one particular trait but, rather, the result of the pattern of interacting traits that define the individual. Mainstream personality theorists tend to rely upon these traits to account for individuals’ behavior in the present, and to predict the likelihood of individuals’ behavior occurring in the future.

Human Beings are "Learning Machines"

One of the most influential psychological perspectives of the twentieth century was behaviorism, introduced by John Watson and vastly extended by B. F. Skinner. Here, human beings were thought to be like learning machines whose behavior could be modified by manipulating rewards and punishments. Rewarding desired behaviors – providing positive reinforcement – will strengthen those behaviors and increase the likelihood that they will occur again. Punish undesirable behaviors and they will likely be weakened and less apt to occur again. 

By identifying the basic laws of learning – the associations between stimuli and responses – psychologists now had the tools to control human behavior and emotion. These tools could then be used by parents, teachers, businessmen and women, the military – all to create human beings who were more likely to be productive members of society.

John B. Watson 1878 - 1958

According to Watson, behavioral techniques can easily be used to shape the emotional life beginning at an early age. He writes: I might make this simple comparison: The fabricator of metal takes his heated mass, places it upon the anvil and begins to shape it according to patterns of his own. Sometimes he uses a heavy hammer, sometimes a light one; sometimes he strikes the yielding mass a mighty blow, sometimes he gives it just a touch. So inevitably do we begin at birth to shape the emotional life of our children.” His most famous quote is, “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.”

B. F. Skinner 1904 - 1990

One of the most widely known behaviorists is B. F. Skinner, who concentrated on developing techniques – primarily reinforcement – to modify behavior. At first, he constructed an operant conditioning chamber, a rigidly controlled environment that came to be called a “Skinner Box.” It is an enclosed apparatus that contains a bar or key that an animal – his early work typically used rats and pigeons – can press or manipulate in order to obtain food or water as a type of reinforcement (as seen below).

Later, Skinner extended his principles and experimental approach and applied his behavior modification techniques to human beings in the real world. Below is a picture of a modified Skinner Box, called an “Heir Conditioner,” that Skinner used while raising his daughter. The caption reads, “Debbie Skinner (11 months) has lived in a soundproof, dirtproof box since birth. “We keep the temperature 78, the humidity 50. She is never too hot, or too cold, but just right.’ Roller sheet (at left) lasts a week.”

Reactions were mixed. As one historian of psychology notes, responses fell into one of two categories:

“In the first category were those who indeed thought that the air crib was at best a crazy contraption invented by a hare-brained scientist, and at worst a dangerous device in which the baby would suffer emotional and physical harm. According to these critics, raising children in boxes was a sign of parental neglect, and would result in permanent damage to the child’s psyche.”

Others argued that the air crib led to smarter and healthier babies, noting that baby Debby Skinner never had a cold or upset stomach and was smarted than the average child.

Nevertheless, Skinner’s experiments with rats and pigeons in small operant chambers were transformed into a widely employed technology of human behavior. Although he never directly conducted experiments with humans, his ideas were employed in classrooms, prisons, hospitals, mental institutions, and communities. They also found their way into self-help manuals. All this with the hope that whatever our human nature, it can be controlled through selective social engineering.

This is not to say that all went smoothly. There were clear misuses of behavior modification techniques in prisons and mental hospitals and issues of basic civil rights were raised. Critics became more outspoken during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s, arguing that such social engineering was dehumanizing and a threat to individual freedom.

These concerns were expressed in Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film, Clockwork Orange, which was nominated for 4 Oscar Awards – Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Picture – and grossed roughly $26 million.

Here, however, is a light-hearted spoof about behaviorism from The Big Bang Theory

Human Beings are Rational Cost-Benefit Analysts

Turning to economics, we find yet another perspective or underlying assumption about human beings – that human beings are rational actors who typically use a cost-benefit analysis when deciding what to do. The choices people make are intended to maximize their benefit. This is a fundamental assumption of the theory of supply and demand.

Criminologists who subscribe to some form of "deterrence theory" also use a rational human being as their starting point. The choices individuals make will then be directed towards the maximization of individual benefit. To deter - prevent - individuals from acting in a deviant manner - murder and other serious crimes -these theorists argue that punishments that are swift, certain, and severe must be put in place. No rational individual, they argue, will then choose to behave in that manner. But even though we are all capable of acting rationally, is this our natural state?

Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky think not. Their research focuses on “flawed human reasoning” and on the “systematic errors in the thinking of normal people.” These errors, they argue, do not occur due to the corrupting effects of emotion but, instead, are but built into our evolved cognitive machinery. They have found roughly twenty “cognitive biases” — unconscious errors of reasoning – that distort our judgment of the world and attribute this to the fact that we typically have two different systems of thinking. The first, “system 1,” is more intuitive and operates automatically and quickly; it is unconscious and leads to our “jumping to conclusions. “System 2,” involves careful systematic attention and concentration – for example, performing complex computations. System 2 thinking is more deliberate and rational – but it is also lazy and tires easily.

Here is a quick example:

A bat and a ball cost $1.10.

The bat costs one dollar more than the ball.
How much does the ball cost?

Most people, automatically using System 1 thinking, say that the answer is 10 cents.

Now think about it more carefully and you will see that the answer is 5 cents . . .

Here is one more:

Linda, is single, outspoken and very bright, and who, as a student, was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice.

Which is more probable?
 
(1) Linda is a bank teller.

(2) Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement

Did you get the correct answer (1)?

Sociology: Human Beings are Active Agents that Construct Social Reality

It was against this background that sociology – the youngest of the social sciences – developed. And early sociologists chose to think about human beings in distinctive ways.

As you shall see each week, sociology is a way of focusing on certain aspects of human conduct, raising certain questions and then relying on the systematic application of scientific methods – not individual, personalized, impressionistic accounts – to attain a deeper understanding of the world.

George Herbert Mead 1863 - 1931

One perspective that we will be examining throughout the semester is called the “symbolic interactionist” perspective. George Herbert Mead, one of the founders of this perspective, and others following in his footsteps, believed that previous approaches ignored the fundamental fact that individuals “think” – that they actively perceive, define, and interpret the world around them. Rather than see the individual as a passive puppet blindly responding to stimuli without necessarily thinking about it – as Mead believed the behaviorists did – Mead wanted to understand what goes on between stimulus and response. Do all individuals interpret and define the stimulus in the same manner? Consider a child who feels neglected by his or her parents and “acts out.” The parents, when disciplining their child, might think that they are punishing their child when, from the child’s point of view, he or she is being rewarded by gaining their attention. It is crucial, symbolic interactionists argue, that peoples’ definition of the situation – what they think about the situation and what they intend to do – must be understood if you want to make sense out of their behavior. And rather than see individuals driven by either psychological impulses – as did Freud – or biological impulses – as did eugenicists – that are not under the control of the person, Mead wanted to focus on the practical face-to-face, day-to-day activities of people in their more immediate social setting and show how they actively construct these settings by communicating with symbols that they create, define, and share.

Sociology: Human beings are Occupants of Social Positions (Statuses)

Another way that sociologists think about human beings is to see them as occupants of social positions – i.e., sex, race, age, social class, educational attainment, religion. These sociologists refer to these social positions as “statuses,” and they see people as occupying a whole array of statuses – what they call a “status-set.”

One of the fundamental propositions of sociology is that we are all shaped and molded by our experiences. If so, we must realize that men and women do not experience the world the same way. Nor do wealthy people and poor people have the same experiences. Or light skinned people in the United States and those with a darker complexion.

Sociologists using this perspective argue that some social positions – regardless of the biological or psychological traits of the person who occupies that position – have more power attached to them and/or more access to opportunities. One’s “life chances,” on average, is greatly affected by the positions or statuses one occupies. As shall be seen, thinking about human beings as status occupants, will generate some interesting questions as we proceed through the semester.

Tomorrow's unit will focus on precisely what sociology is - its history and its distinctive perspectives - ways of thinking about inidividuals, their social groups, and the larger society.

 

Copyright 2020, Larry Stern
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