20
th
Century Progressives
& Eugenics
–
Historical Contradictions
Copyright 2012 AIHE
Thinking Historically
Copyright 2011 AIHE
Progressive Leader
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Graduated Yale with honors
Law Degree from Columbia Law
Naturalist
Friend of Teddy Roosevelt
Friend of Herbert Hoover
Referred to in F. Scott Fitzgerald’
Great Gatsby
Conservationist
Founding Member of the Boone
and Crocket Club
 Formed Yellowstone Park
Saved the Giant Redwoods
1st Deer hunting license in NY
 Regulate the deer herd (save
the deer)
Created Wildlife Management
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Helped found the Bronx Zoo
Built the Bronx River Parkway
Secretary of the N.Y. Zoological
Society
Helped organize the American
Bison Society to save the Bison
Helped create the Glacier National
Park and Denali National Park in
Alaska
A Caribou species named after
him
On Board of Trustees of the
American Museum of Natural
History
National Research Conference
Council of Anthropology
Copyright 2011 AIHE
Contemporary Genetics Leader
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1916 – Wrote the Passing of the Great Race
 Translated into German, 1925
 By 1937, 1,600,000 copies were sold
 Adolf Hitler wrote, “This Book is my Bible.”
President of the American Eugenics Society
V.P. Immigration Restriction League from 1922 until his death
 Responsible for the Immigrant Act of 1924
Worked to get Anti-Miscegenation Laws
 Notably: Racial Integrity Act of 1924
 Tried to get his “One Drop Rule” codified
Treasurer of the 2nd Eugenics Conference of 1921
Put Uta Benga, an African Pygmy, in the
Bronx Zoo as the “missing link”
Copyright 2011 AIHE
Excerpts
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In a 1912 article in the North American Review
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In the 1916 The Passing of a Great Race
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In the 1920 book The Rising Tide of Color Against White
World Supremacy
Copyright 2011 AIHE
"Darwinism and Anti-Italian Sentiment"
Excerpt One
In a 1912 article in the North American Review, Prescott F. Hall of the Immigration Restriction League wrote that immigrants brought with them “. .
. political and social institutions very different from ours [Americans]. The Southern Italian, which constitutes the largest element in our present
immigration, is one of the most mixed races in Europe and is partly African, owing to the negroid migration from Carthage [who were really Semitic
Phoenicians] to Italy. . . . The negro strain in the South Italians has already been mentioned . . . What would happen if a large Mediterranean [Italian]
population should be colonized in our Southern States and should inbreed with the negro population it finds there? This is not an imaginary
possibility, for the dark-skinned races are more likely to settle in the southern part of the country. . . . Let us suppose that some inbreeding with the
negro takes place. Will the descendents of the emotional, fiery Italians submit to the social judgment that a man with a sixteenth or a thirty-second
part of negro blood is a colored man who must occupy a position socially, if not politically inferior?
Excerpt Two
In 1916 Madison Grant, author of The Passing of a Great Race told his readers the highly evolved American people would become a diluted race, once
new immigrants came into the United States and started to intermarry with Americans. He claimed that European leaders had taken the “. . .
opportunity to unload upon careless, wealthy, and hospitable America the sweepings of their jails and asylums. The result was that the new
immigration . . . contained a large and increasing number of the weak, the broken and the mentally crippled of all races drawn from the lowest
stratum of the Mediterranean [southern Italy and Sicily] basin. . . . These immigrants adopt the language of the native [born] American, they wear his
clothes, they steal his name and they are beginning to take his woman, but they seldom adopt his religion [Protestant Christianity] or understand his
ideals.”
Excerpt Three
In a 1920 book, “The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy, Lothrop Stoodard warned against allowing immigrants into the country. He
divided the White Race into three branches, the Nordic (blonde, blue-eyed English and Northern Germanics) the Alpines (stocky, brown- haired
Austrian Germans, Swiss, etc,) and the Mediterranean (Southern Italians and Sicilians). He ranked the Mediterraneans as the most inferior branch
of the White Race and warned against allowing them and immigrants of color into the United States. He worried that Mediterraneans would mix
with Americans and, “Hence, when a highly specialized stock (superior white branches) interbreeds with a different stock (lower white branches or
with people of color), the newer less stable, specialized characters are bred out, the variation, no matter how great its potential value to human
evolution, being irretrievably lost [author‘s emphasis].
Copyright 2011 AIHE
Excerpts
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Prescott Farnsworth Hall
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Madison Grant
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Lothard Stoddard
Copyright 2011 AIHE
Mainstream Authors, Academics,
Scientists, Politicians, etc.
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How do we put this in Historical Context?
Madison Grant is a Progressive
All his beliefs were mainstream thought
“Settled Science”
Copyright 2011 AIHE
Progressive Era
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Progressives looked to control NATURE
Science can control nature
They based their beliefs on Darwinian
theories
Copyright 2011 AIHE
Darwinism is very much a factor!
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A factor for Communism
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A factor for Nazism
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Save the Deer, the Redwood, the Caribou through
human control
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Through:
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Central Planning
Save Humanity through Central
Planning
Based on science and technology
Copyright 2011 AIHE
Breeding of:
Plants, Animals, and People
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Sterilize and/or
imprisonment
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Contraception– Immigration
restriction
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The “feeble-minded”
The handicapped
The criminals
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Lower Races
Highest Races
Nordic
Alpines
Mediterranean
Japanese
Chinese
Negroes
Gorillas
Celts
Copyright 2011 AIHE
Aristotle
 Society
seeks:
 An Advantage
 A Justification
 The “Good”
Copyright 2011 AIHE
Eugenics
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American Medical Association
British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour
Leonard Darwin
Winston Churchill
Alexander Graham Bell
John Maynard Keynes
Copyright 2011 AIHE
American Eugenics
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Teddy Roosevelt
Gifford Pinchot
Woodrow Wilson
Herbert Hoover
Franklin D Roosevelt
Emma Goldmann
Margaret Stanger
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Copyright 2011 AIHE
Historian Walter McDougall wrote that the U. S. Constitution
lasted so long because it was written by men with a great
comprehension of human nature:
“They envisioned no utopias, put little trust in republican virtue,
and believed the only government liable to endure was one
taking mankind as it was and making allowance for passion and
greed.”
Madison’s Checks and Balances, Federalism, etc.
Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand
Early 20th Century Progressive Thought
Wilson Regarding Individual Rights:
“No doubt, a lot of nonsense has been talked about the
inalienable rights of the individual. And a great deal that was
mere vague sentiment and pleasing speculation has been put
forward as a fundamental principle.”
“Some citizens in this country have
never gotten beyond the Declaration
of Independence..”
Imperialist Progressivism
Wilson had applauded the annexation of Puerto Rico and the Philippines
after the Spanish-American War.
“They are children and we are men in the deep matters of
government and justice.”
He denounced “. . . Anti-imperialist weeping and wailing that
came out of Boston.”
Wilson idolized both Otto von Bismarck and Abraham Lincoln. Wilson believed
a nation needs a strong leader– a personification of the state.
He loved Lincoln because Lincoln could impose his will on the entire nation.
Lincoln centralized, modernized, and used power to build a new United States. He
had:
•Suspended Habeas Corpus
• Imprisoned opponents
• Instituted a Draft
Historian Walter McDougall: “If any trait bubbles up in all one reads about Wilson, it
is this: he loved, craved, and in a sense glorified power.”
In his book Congressional Government ,Wilson wrote: “I CANNOT imagine power
as a thing negative, not positive.”
At 29 in 1885 Wilson wanted a British-like Centralized Parliamentary System of
Government. BUT
In 1908, after watching Teddy Roosevelt
use the Bully Pulpit, Wilson wrote:
“The President is at liberty, both in law and in conscience,
to be as big a man as he can. His capacity will set the
limit and if Congress be over borne by him, it will
be no fault of he makers of the Constitution . . .
But only because the President has the nation behind him and Congress has not.”
Wilson believed that the state was a natural, organic and spiritual expression
of the people themselves.
Not a Newtonian machine - rather it was a Darwinian, evolving organism.
Increases in state power were evolutionary.
Wilson to John Dewey to FDR talked of governmental experimentation.
Try everything- to best ideas will rise to the top, just like some mutants survive
and others die off.
“Government does now whatever experience permits or the times demand.” 1912
Woodrow Wilson (Leaders of Men, 1890 ) on progressive leadership:
“He (the leader) supplies the power; others supply only the materials
upon which the power operates. . . It is the power which dictates,
dominates: the materials yield. Men are a clay in the hands of the
commutate leader.”
On the Constitution, on the campaign trail in 1912
Darwin not Newton
“. . . living political constitutions must be Darwinian in
structure and in practice. Society is a living organism and
must obey laws of Life. . . It must develop. . . all that
progressives ask or desire is permission– in an era when
‘development,’ ‘evolution,’ is the scientific word—
to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian
principle, all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a
living thing and not a machine.”
Progressive Leaders -- Bitter Rivals
Teddy Roosevelt
 Great actor on the world
stage
 The BULL Moose
 Led men in battle
 More Mars
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Warrior ruling class,
Strenuous life of Leaders
Strict Meritocracy
Woodrow Wilson
 More of a Director
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The Schoolmaster
Led a graduate seminar
More Venus
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Disinterested Technocrats
Bureaucrats
Social Workers
Two Sides of the Same Progressive
Coin
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Albert Beveridge
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Nationalist side of the coin
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Strong Imperialist
Strong Militarist
Strong believer in Anglo-Saxon racial superiority
Social Reform side of the coin
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Leader in the 1906 Federal Meat Inspection Act
Fought to end child labor
Worked for the 8 hour work day
Teddy Roosevelt’s biggest ally against “Conservatives”
Left the GOP to ran as a Progressive in 1912, with TR.
Progressives as Social Darwinists Mold a New Society;
Control and Conquer Nature
Eugenics
Conservationist
Imperialism
Planned Economies,
Corporatists
• In 1911, New Jersey passed a sterilization law:
• The law was signed by Governor Woodrow Wilson.
• It authorized the sterilization of insane, epileptic, and
retarded persons, as well as certain criminals.
• Criminals could be sterilized, including repeat
offenders.
• A board of examiners would rule if there was sufficient
evidence of criminal tendencies.
•Over 50,000 people in the USA were sterilized during this
period.
“Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce.” Theodore Roosevelt
"I wish very much that the wrong people could be prevented entirely
from breeding“ - Theodore Roosevelt
In an opinion for the Carrie Buck case, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell
Holmes wrote:
“Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
Margaret Sanger
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"No woman shall have the legal right to bear a
child… without a permit for parenthood."
her proposed The American Baby Code, intended law.
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"The most merciful thing that a family does to one of
its infant members is to kill it.“
The Woman Rebel, Volume I, Number 1. Reprinted in Woman and the
New Race. New York: Brentanos Publishers, 1922.
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"Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race."
Woman, Morality, and Birth Control. New York: New York Publishing
Company, 1922. P. 12.
There’s more:
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"We should hire three or four colored ministers,
preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with
engaging personalities. The most successful educational
approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We
don't want the word to go out that we want to
exterminate the Negro population. and the minister is the
man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to
any of their more rebellious members."
December 19, 1939 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, 255 Adams Street, Milton,
Massachusetts. Original source: Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, North
Hampton, Massachusetts. Also described in Linda Gordon's Woman's Body,
Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America. New York:
Grossman Publishers, 1976.
Copyright 2009 AIHE
Madison Grant
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Mistaken regard for what are believed to be
divine laws and a sentimental belief in the
sanctity of human life tend to prevent both the
elimination of defective infants and the
sterilisation [sic] of such adults as are
themselves of no value to the community.
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."
Copyright 2009 AIHE
The film called The Birth of the Nation was released
in 1915.
It was based on a 1905 novel called The Clansman.
The success of the film at the box-office was uncertain
until it was viewed at the White House, by Woodrow
Wilson
During the film, Wilson had jumped to his
feet and shouted that “It is like writing history
with lightning. And my only regret is that it is
all so terribly true.”
Papers reported that Wilson loved the
film and the money started to roll in.
William J. Simmons formed a new
(the second) Ku Klux Klan in Georgia.
The 2nd Klan was by far the largest. It had a big
presence in New Jersey and especially in the Midwest.
The prime focus of hatred went towards Catholic
& Jewish immigrants and against any Catholics in
America.
The Klan marched on Washington, DC in 1925.
Wilson’s Racial Attitudes
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He believed that giving African Americans the right to vote was “…
the foundation of every evil in this country.”
During his first term in office, the House passed a law making racial
intermarriage a felony in the District of Columbia.
His Postmaster General also ordered that his Washington offices be
segregated, with the Treasury and Navy soon doing the same.
Photographs were required of all applicants for federal jobs. When
pressed by black leaders, Wilson replied, "The purpose of these
measures was to reduce the friction. It is as far as possible from
being a movement against the Negroes. I sincerely believe it to be in
their interest."
The Eugenics Movement
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Lost a lot of credibility during the 1930s. as
Nazis in Germany pointed to American state
laws and research as models.
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Adolf Hitler: Now that we know the laws of heredity, it is
possible to a large extent to prevent unhealthy and
severely handicapped beings from coming into the world.
I have studied with interest the laws of several American
states concerning prevention of reproduction by people
whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or
be injurious to the racial stock.
Copyright 2009 AIHE
Ended with Revulsion of the Nazis
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Concentration Camps as the local extension
of Eugenics
Copyright 2011 AIHE
American Civil Rights Movement
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Non violent Revolution
Copyright 2011 AIHE
Thinking Historically
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No Presentism
Use Historical Context
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St. Isaac Jorges
Cinque
Thomas Jefferson
Southern Whites
Copyright 2011 AIHE