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

  • Kenneth Ludmerer
Date:
[1972]
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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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    26 The American Eugenics Movement: 1905-1930 H. Laughlin, Superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office; Henry F. Osborn, the noted paleontologist of the American Museum of Natural History; and Prescott Hall and Robert DeC. Ward, the two leading figures of the Immigration Restriction League and leaders of the Committee on Immigration of the American Breeders' Association. In origin they were Easterners (primarily from New York and Boston), Protestant, Anglo- Saxon, and proper old-stock aristocrats. Even though their numbers within the movement were not so large, their influence was great, since most of them had become prominent spokesmen for the movement. They had evinced intense hatred for immigrants long before the general public ever heard of the Nordic race, and they had been obsessed with the idea of restricting immigration for decades. Ward, Hall, Grant, and others had participated zealously in the activities of the Immigration Restriction League since its inception in 1894. Of course, other eugenicists to various degrees also had an emotional commitment to the theory of Nordic superi¬ ority, but the group in question represents one extreme of a spectrum. In the eugenics movement they found a useful tool to promote sentiment for selective immigration restriction, and after World War I their scientific authority as eugenicists proved of great usefulness to them. * * * How may the racist eugenicists be distinguished from those who lacked their rigid, deep, emotional commitment to the theory of Nordic superiority? How may such a judgment of prejudice be made from the historical record? Prejudice, after all, is something which few would admit to having, even to themselves. The post-World War I appeal of eugenicists' vision of the inferiority of southern and eastern Europeans was that it seemed to make dislike for those peoples a matter of science, not of prejudice or ill-will. If biology truly did indicate that non-Nordic races possessed undesirable qualities which did not respond to environmental attempts at improvement, that they could not be assimilated, that they could not appreciate American governmental ideals and institutions, and that they outbred the native, then of course it was foolish and self- destructive to permit such newcomers to enter the United States. Osborn could persuasively argue, Conservation of that race [Nordic] which has given us the true spirit of Americanism is not a matter either of racial pride or of racial prejudice; it is a matter of love of country, of a true sentiment which is based upon knowledge and the lessons of history rather than upon the sentimentalism which is fostered by ignorance.®^ In urging 63. Ibid., p. ix.
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