Genetics and American society : a historical appraisal / Kenneth M. Ludmerer.

  • Kenneth Ludmerer
Date:
[1972]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: Genetics and American society : a historical appraisal / Kenneth M. Ludmerer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    8 The American Eugenics Movement: 1905-1930 defectives that they felt negative eugenic measures must be implemented and enforced by legislation. Society must protect itself, wrote Charles B. Davenport, a well-known geneticist and the leading American eugenicist of the pre-Depression era, as it claims the right to deprive the murderer of his life so also it may annihilate the hideous serpent of hopelessly vicious protoplasm.^ The other important part of eugenic роИсу was positive eugenics, the effort to increase desired traits in the population by encouraging worthy parenthood. Since the social and technical difficulties facing positive eugenics were so great, most eugenicists felt no more could be done than to educate the public on the facts of heredity in the hope that su¬ perior couples would voluntarily heed the message to have more children. It was with some dismay that Herbert J. Webber, a well-known plant breeder and eugenicist from Cornell University, wrote: Positive construc¬ tive eugenics is mainly limited to the encouragement that can be given to the production of large families among the better classes.^ Some eugeni¬ cists were quite pessimistic and felt that the implementation of positive programs was a hopelessly discouraging task to which even eugenic educa¬ tion could make little contribution. One well-known eugenicist declared: The geneticist can only point out the problem and emphasize as much as possible the urgency of its solution. Unless economic and social changes permit and encourage people of superior morality and intelligence to have more children, eugenics can make little progress.^ Curiously, this two-part plan of positive and negative eugenics constituted the eugenics movement's official program for the entire period from the turn of the century untü the early years of the Depression. This was true of eugenics not only in America but elsewhere as well. The participants at the Third International Eugenics Congress (New York, 1932) believed in the basic validity of this program as much as the dele¬ gates at the First International Eugenics Congress (London, 1912)^ — 2. Charles B. Davenport, Report of Committee on Eugenics, American Breeders' Magazine, 1(1910): 129. 3. Herbert J. Webber, Eugenics from the Point of View of the Geneticist, in Eugenics: Twelve University Lectures (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Co., 1914), p. 143. 4. Paul Popenoe, Will Morality Disappear? Journal of Heredity, 9(0ctober, 1918):270. 5. The proceedings of these congresses were published as Problems in Eugenics. Papers Communicated to the First International Eugenics Congress (London: Eugen¬ ics Education Society, 1912); and Л Decade of Progress in Eugenics. Scientific Papers of the Third International Congress of Eugenics (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins Co 1934).
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