CHAPTER 6

The United States of Sterilization

It didn't matter that the majority of the American people opposed sterilization
and the eugenics movement's other draconian solutions. It didn't
matter that the underlying science was a fiction, that the intelligence measurements
were fallacious, that the Constitutionality was tenuous, or that
the whole idea was roundly condemned by so many. None of that mattered
because Davenport, Laughlin and their eugenic constellation were not
interested in furthering a democracy-they were creating a supremacy.

Of course, American eugenicists did not seek the approbation of the
masses whose defective germ plasm they sought to wipe away. Instead, they
relied upon the powerful, the wealthy and the influential to make their war
against the weak a conflict fought not in public, but in the administrative
and bureaucratic foxholes of America. A phalanx of shock troops sallied
forth from obscure state agencies and special committees-everyone from
the elite of the academic world to sympathetic legislators who sought to
shroud their racist beliefs under the protective canopy of science. In tandem,
they would hunt, identify, label and take control of those deemed
unfit to populate the earth.

During the years bracketing World War I, a potent, if unsound, intelligence
classification system was taking root. A patchwork of largely inert
state sterilization laws awaited greater validation. The elite thinkers of
American medicine, science and higher education were busy expanding the
body of eugenic knowledge and evangelizing its tenets. However, the
moment had still not arrived for eugenic rhetoric to massively impact the
country. During these percolating years, Davenport and Laughlin continued
to prepare the groundwork. They knew humanity could not be recreated
overnight. They were patient men.

During the war years, eugenic organizations proliferated in America.
Like-minded citizens found ethnic solace and even self-vindication in the
idea of biological superiority. The Race Betterment Foundation was
among the leading eugenic organizations that sprouted around the country
to augment the work at Cold Spring Harbor. The society was founded by
yet another wealthy American, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg of Battle Creek,
Michigan. Dr. Kellogg was a member of the state board of health and operated
a health sanitarium renowned for its alternative and fanciful food regimens.
He had developed for his patients a natural product, a cereal made of
wheat flakes. In 1898, Dr. Kellogg's brother, Will, created the corn flake,
and in 1906 he began selling it commercially through a company that
would ultimately become the cereal giant known as Kellogg Company. In
that same year, Dr. Kellogg founded the Race Betterment Foundation to
help stop the propagation of defectives. I

The Race Betterment Foundation attracted some of the most radical
elements of the eugenics community. The organization wanted to compile
its own eugenic registry, listing the backgrounds of as many Americans as
possible, this to augment the one being developed by the Eugenics Record
Office. In 1914, Dr. Kellogg organized the First Race Betterment
Conference in Battle Creek, Michigan. The conference's purpose was to
lay the foundations for the creation of a super race, amid an atmosphere of
lavish banquets, stirring calls to biological action, and scientific grandiloquence.
"We have wonderful new races of horses, cows, and pigs," argued
Dr. Kellogg. "Why should we not have a new and improved race of men?"
He wanted the "white races of Europe ... to establish a Race of Human
Thorough breds."2

Davenport told the Battle Creek conferees that this could be accomplished
by working quietly with the heads of state institutions. "The superintendents
of state institutions," he explained, "were very desirous of
assistance. We were able to give it to them, and they to us." Davenport
relied upon institutional figures to authenticate his findings. "We have
found that a large proportion of the feeble-minded, the great majority of
them, are such because they belong to defective stock."3

Whatever restraint Laughlin used in his formal writings was absent
from his speeches to the eugenic vanguard. Laughlin boldly put the Battle
Creek gathering on notice: "To purify the breeding stock of the race at all
costs is the slogan of eugenics." His three-pronged program was based on
sterilization, mass incarceration, and sweeping immigration restrictions.
"The compulsory sterilization of certain degenerates," affirmed Laughlin,
"is therefore designed as a eugenical agency complementary to the segregation
of the socially unfit classes, and to the control of the immigration of
those who carry defective germ-plasm."4

The mothers of unfit children should be relegated to "a place comparable
to that of the females of mongrel strains of domestic animals," said
Laughlin. He complained that although twelve states had enacted laws,
only a thousand people had been sterilized. "A halfway measure will never
strike deeply at the roots of evil," he railed.'

At the Second Race Betterment Conference held the next year, ERO
Scientific Director Irving Fisher, a Yale University economist, was equally
blunt. "Gentlemen and ladies," Fisher sermonized, "you have not any idea
unless you have studied this subject mathematically, how rapidly we could
exterminate this contamination if we really got at it, or how rapidly the
contamination goes on if we do not get at it."6

Eugenic extremism enjoyed layer upon layer of scientific veneer not
only because eminent scholars enunciated its doctrine and advocated its
solutions, but also by virtue of its numerous respected "research bodies."
The Eugenics Record Office had inaugurated a Board of Scientific
Directors in December of 1912. The board was initially comprised of
Davenport, plus eminent Harvard neuropathologist E. E. Southard,
Alexander Graham Bell and renowned Johns Hopkins University pathologist
William Welch. Welch enjoyed impeccable qualifications; he had
served as both the first scientific director of the Rockefeller Institute for
Medical Research and as a trustee of the Carnegie Institution. Moreover,
before and during his term on the ERO's scientific board, Welch was also
elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of
Sciences, the American Medical Association and the National Academy of
Science. Understandably, Laughlin and Davenport felt it only fitting that
he should serve as chairman of the ERO's Board of Scientific Directors.7

Among the biological issues the board identified as vital were "the consequences
of marriages between distinct races-miscegenation," "the study
of America's most effective bloodlines," as well as "restricting the strains
that require state care." The board also sought to examine the ancestral caliber
of immigrants being allowed into the country. As usual, feeblemindedness
took the spotlight. Several key regions of the East Coast were targeted
for investigation.8

Among the directors, only Bell became uncomfortable with the ERO's
direction. He immediately voiced consternation over eugenics' constant
focus on inferior traits. "Why not vary a little from this program and investigate
the inheritance of some desirable characteristics," Bell wrote
Davenport on December 27, 1912, just days after the board's first meeting.
For emphasis, Bell reiterated over and over in his letter that the ERO's sub
stantial funding might be better" devoted to the study of ... desirable characteristics
rather than undesirable. The whole subject of eugenics has been
too much associated in the public mind with fantastical and impractical
schemes for restricting marriage and preventing the propagation of undesirable
characteristics, so that the very name 'Eugenics' suggests, to the
average mind ... an attempt to interfere with the liberty of the individual in
his pursuit of happiness in marriage."9

Perhaps the most militant of the eugenic research bodies was the
Eugenics Research Association, created in June of 1913 at Cold Spring
Harbor. Like many other eugenic groups, this association was also dominated
by Davenport and Laughlin. But unlike the other eugenic bodies, the
Eugenics Research Association was determined to go far beyond family
investigations and position papers. The body was determined to escalate its
"research" into legislative and administrative action, and public propaganda
for the causes of eugenics, raceology and Nordic race supremacy. As
such, the Eugenics Research Association brought together America's most
esteemed eugenic medical practitioners, the field's most respected university
professors, the movement's most intellectual theorists and the nation's
most rabid eugenic racists. 10

Only fifty-one charter members created the ERA, and its ranks did not
exceed five hundred in later years. Those fifty-one charter members
included men and women from the senior echelons of psychology, such as
Yerkes and Adolf Meyer; later, Goddard, Brigham, Terman and other intelligence
measurement authorities would join up. Professors from the medical
schools and life science departments of Harvard, Columbia, Yale,
Emory, Brown and Johns Hopkins were counted among the ranks. II

Two race hatred fanatics, Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard,
achieved leadership roles within the organization. Grant was internationally
known for his bestseller, The Passing of the Great Race, which promoted
Nordic whites as the superior race. Grant's book, revered by eugenicists,
lamented that America had been infested by "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 basin and the Balkans,
together with hordes of the wretched, submerged populations of the Polish
Ghetto." Grant called these "human flotsam." Among America's genetic
enemies, Grant singled out Irishmen, whom he insisted "were of no social
importance." As a eugenic remedy, he preached: "A rigid system of selection
through the elimination of those who are weak or unfit-in other
words, social failures-would solve the whole question in a century .... "
Grant held numerous leadership roles in the Eugenics Research Association,
including its presidency, and ultimately sat with Davenport on the
three-man executive committee. 12

Stoddard would write an equally belligerent bestseller, published by
Scribner's, entitled The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy.
Harvard-educated Stoddard defiantly summarized his science in these
words: "You cannot make bad stock into good ... any more than you can
turn a cart-horse into a hunter by putting it into a fine stable, or make a
mongrel into a fine dog by teaching it tricks." He urged widespread segregation
and immigration restrictions to combat the unfit races, which
Stoddard compared to infectious bacteria. "Just as we isolate bacterial invasions
and starve out the bacteria by limiting the area and amount of their
food-supply, so we can compel an inferior race to remain in its native habitat
... [which will] as with all organisms, eventually limit ... its influence."
Stoddard was one of the early members of the Eugenics Research
Association, joining in response to the association's official invitation. 13

The ranks of the ERA included eugenic activists of all sorts, but of the
fifty-one original members, none was more enigmatic than charter member
#14. His name was Dr. Edwin Katzen-Ellenbogen. 14

Dr. Katzen-Ellenbogen had distinguished himself in the field of psychology,
mostly though his work with epileptics. In the years just prior to
his charter membership, Katzen-Ellenbogen served as the director of the
Psychopathological Laboratory at New Jersey's State Village for Epileptics
at Skillman. Before that he had been an assistant physician at
Danvers Hospital in Massachusetts, as well as a clinical assistant at a medical
school in New York and a lecturer in abnormal psychology at
Harvard. Just a year before joining the ERA, he had presented a paper on
the mental capacity of epileptics before the National Association for the
Study of Epilepsy at Goddard's Vineland Training School for Feebleminded
Girls and Boys in New Jersey. He was considered an up-andcoming
talent. Although just twenty-seven years of age, Katzen-
Ellenbogen was listed as a leading psychologist in the distinguished
biographical volume, American Men of Science. 15

Who was Katzen-Ellenbogen, really? He spelled his last name numerous
ways, hyphenated and unhyphenated. He was an American citizen, but
he was actually born in Stanislawow, in Austrian-occupied Poland; he
immigrated to the United States in 1905. He settled in Fitchburg,
Massachusetts. Shortly after arriving in Fitchburg, the twenty-four-yearold
Katzen-Ellenbogen married Marie A. Pierce, an American woman six
years his junior. Two months later, he traveled to Paris for further studies,
but returned to the U.S. in 1907 when he was naturalized. He boasted credentials
from Harvard and was a member of that university's postgraduate
teaching staff, but he had actually received his primary education in Poland
and his secondary schooling in Germany. He assumed the middle name
"Maria," perhaps after his wife's name, but his real middle name was
Wladyslaw. He claimed to be Roman Catholic, but was actually]ewish.16

Long-skulled, with bushy eyebrows, a thin mustache and a semicircular
receding hairline topped by a very high brow, Katzen-Ellenbogen's head
seemed almost too large for his body. As one who had worked with epileptics,
disturbed children and the insane, Katzen-Ellenbogen had become
accustomed to tinkering with the extremes of human frailty and the limits
of will. He was attracted to the mysteries of the mind, but was convinced
that the field of psychology was still in its infancy as it probed those mysteries.
"Psychology is a discipline of undue hopes and uncritical skepticism,"
he wrote, adding, "It has been a hard battle, which in forty years time has
elevated psychology from a cinderella science domiciled in one room at the
Leipzig University to palace-like institutions, such as for instance the
Harvard Psychological Institute .... "17

In 1915, two years after he joined the Eugenics Research Association,
Katzen-Ellenbogen sailed again to Europe. He would never return to
America. He traveled first to Russia, but ended up in Germany. By then,
Europe was embroiled in a bloody World War. But Katzen-Ellenbogen
remained an "active member" of the organization even while abroad. Then
America entered the war against Germany, and on March 21, 1918, the association's
executive committee dropped Katzen-Ellenbogen from its rolls.18

Katzen-Ellenbogen studied troubled minds but was also familiar with
intense personal pain and the fire of his own considerable mental anguish.
In 1920, his only son, still in America, fell from a roof garden and was
killed. The boy's death destroyed Katzen-Ellenbogen's sense of personal
existence. There would be no male heir to carry on his bloodline, which
contradicted the central aspiration of eugenics. But beyond any tenet of
science, the untimely death would haunt Katzen-Ellenbogen for the rest
of his life. He was in Europe when it occurred, yet he did not return for
the funeral. The doctor's wife slid into profound depression. Katzen-
Ellenbogen never forgave himself for staying away. Suicidal impulses
would grip him for years. 19

Bitter but also philosophical, purely scientific yet overwhelmingly
ambitious, Katzen-Ellenbogen wandered from mental place to mental
place. He emerged with the disconnected sense of a man with nothing to
lose. Abortionist, drug peddler, informer, medical theorist, murderer-
Katzen-Ellenbogen eventually drifted into all of these realms.20 This
American eugenicist would disappear from America, but his biological
vision of humanity would eventually shock the world. or would he be
alone in his crimes.

***

Eugenics found allies not just among the nation's learned men, but also
among the affluent and influential. In 1912, shortly before the Eugenics
Record Office installed its board of scientific directors, the New York State
legislature had created the Rockefeller Foundation, which boasted fabulous
assets. John D. Rockefeller donated $35 million the first year, and $65 million
more the next year.21 Davenport was keen to funnel Rockefeller's
money into eugenics. As he had done with Mrs. Harriman, Davenport cultivated
a personal connection with Rockefeller's son, John D. Rockefeller
Jr. The younger Rockefeller controlled the foundation's millionsY

Shy and intensely private, the oil heir seemed to enjoy corresponding
with Davenport about sundry eugenic topics. On January 27,1912, using
his personal 26 Broadway stationery, the young Rockefeller wrote
Davenport a letter about a plan to incarcerate feebleminded criminal
women for an extra length of time, so they "would ... be kept from perpetuating
[their] kind ... until after the period of child bearing had been
passed." Two months later, Rockefeller Jr. sent Davenport a copy of a Good
Housekeeping article referencing Pearson and British eugenicists.
Rockefeller asked, "Will you be good enough to return the article with
your reply, which I shall greatly appreciate." On April 2, Rockefeller sent
Davenport a formal thank you for answering a letter just received. About a
month later, Rockefeller sent another note of personal thanks, this time for
answering questions about the Good Housekeeping article.23

At its first meeting, the ERa's board of scientific directors "voted to
recommend to Mr. John D. Rockefeller the support of the following investigations."
The ERa's board, chaired by William Welch (who doubled as
Rockefeller's own scientific director), compiled a short list: first, "an analysis
of feeblemindedness"; second, "a study of a center of heavy incidence of
insanity in Worcester County, Massachusetts"; third, a well-financed "preliminary
study of the sources of the better and the poorer strains of immigrants"
to be conducted overseas. They also petitioned Rockefeller to fund
a statistician who would compile the data.24

Welch found his work with the ERO satisfying, and did not mind
becoming vice-chairman when Alexander Graham Bell was appointed to
the top post. Two years after Welch joined the board of scientific directors,
Davenport used the connection to secure additional Rockefeller financial
support. On March 1, 1915, Davenport told Welch, "It seems to me a
favorable time to approach the Rockefeller Foundation on the subject of
giving a fund for investment to the Eugenics Record Office." Davenport
skillfully played Mrs. Harriman's wealth against Rockefeller's vastly superior
fortune. To date, Rockefeller's foundation had "given us $6,000 a year,
whereas Mrs. Harriman has given us $25,000" as well as funds for construction
and other general expenses. Davenport's new plan called for an
annual investment fund, as well as money to establish a better indexing
operation to link surnames, traits and geographic locales. After adding up
the columns, itemizing the projects and totaling the results, Davenport
wrote Welch, "1 would suggest that we should ask for $600,000 [$10.1 million
in modern money] from the Rockefeller Foundation."25

If Rockefeller agreed to the $600,000 subvention, Davenport planned
to go back to Mrs. Harriman and ask her to go one better. "We should then
ask Mrs. Harriman to consider an endowment of $800,000 to $1 million."
That would almost double her annual tithe.26

As expected, Davenport lunched with Mrs. Harriman just days later.
Their discussion was fruitful. "She is, 1 understand, ready to turn over
some property to [the Eugenics Record Office]''' Davenport happily
reported to Bell. Mrs. Harriman's financial support would ultimately grow
to hundreds of thousands of dollars. 27

Big money made all the difference for eugenics. Indeed, biological
supremacy, raceology and coercive eugenic battle plans were all just talk
until those ideas married into American affluence. With that affluence
came the means and the connections to make eugenic theory an administrative
reality.

Providing her opulent 1 East Sixty-ninth Street home as a meeting
place, Mrs. Harriman bestowed her prestige as well as her wealth on the
eugenic crusade. At one meeting in her home on April 8, 1914, more
than a dozen experts gathered to plan action against those considered
feebleminded. Most offered short presentations. Goddard, fresh from
his intelligence-testing accomplishments, began the meeting with a proposed
definition of "feebleminded." Another outlined ideas on "segregation
of the feebleminded." A third offered "new and needed legislation
in re: the feebleminded." Laughlin presented a fifteen-minute talk on
"sterilization of the feebleminded." Davenport spoke on county surveys
of the feebleminded.28

Mrs. Harriman wielded great power. When she made a request of New
York State officials, it was difficult for them to say no. Davenport's proposed
county surveys in search of the unfit, for example, were implemented
by state officials. Eugenic agencies were established, often bearing innocuous
names. Robert Hebberd, secretary of the New York State Board of
Charities, reported to Mrs. Harriman that "our Eugenics Bureau is known
officially as the Bureau of Analysis and Investigation." In describing the
agency's work, Hebberd's letter reflected the usual eugenic parlance, "The
study of groups of defective individuals is so closely related to the welfare of
future generations that the lessons drawn from the histories of abnormal
families ... [can] prevent the continuance of conditions which foster social
evils." He added that to this end, the records of some 300,000 people had
already been tabulated in twenty-four of New York State's counties.
Hebberd promised to coordinate his agency's work with privately financed
eugenic field surveys "in Rockland County, under your direction." He deferentially
added, "Permit me to say that it is gratifying to know of your
deep interest in this branch of the work of the State Board of Charities."29

Rockefeller also financed private county surveys. His foundation would
cover the $10,000 cost of a hunt for the unfit in New York's Nassau County.
Davenport and several Nassau County appointees formed an impromptu
"Committee on the Enumeration of Mental Defectives," which worked
closely with local school authorities in search of inferior students. Eight
field workers would assist the search.30

Some ordinary New York State agencies changed their focuses from
benign to eugenic. One such agency operated under the innocuous-sounding
name of the Bureau of Industries and Immigration. Originally established
to protect disadvantaged immigrants, the bureau began employing
investigators to identify "defectives," the feebleminded and the insane.
One typical report on fifteen feebleminded newcomers began with Case
#258, which focused on Teresa Owen, a forty-year-old woman from
Ireland who was classified as insane. The case note on Owen read, "Has
been released to her husband and is cohabiting with him, with what disastrous
results to posterity ... no one can foretell. She is a menace ... [and]
should be removed and segregated pending removal." Case #430 treated
Eva Stypanovitz, an eighteen-year-old Russian Jew who was classified as
feebleminded. The file on Stypanovitz noted, "Case diagnosed by relatives.
Is of marriageable age, and a menace to the community." Case #918 dealt
with Vittorio Castellino, a thirty-five-year-old from Italy, and recorded,
"Such a case cannot be too extravagantly condemned from a eugenic and
economic poin t of view."31

Another such agency was the organization that became known as the
National Committee on Prison and Prison Labor, first organized in 1910
by the ew York State Department of Labor to investigate the exploitation
of convict-manufactured goods. Four years later, the body changed its
name amid a "widening of its activities." Judge Olson, the stalwart eugenic
activist who also directed the Municipal Court of Chicago Psychopathic
Laboratory, steered his colleagues on the prison committee to create similar
municipal psychopathic labs to document hereditary criminality in their
cities. The New York City Police Department did indeed establish a psychopathic
laboratory for eugenic investigations, utilizing Eugenics Record
Office field workers supplied by Mrs. Harriman. Davenport himself
headed up the prison group's special committee on eugenics, which was
established "to get at the ... heredity factors in anti-social behavior ... with
the aid of a careful family history." Prisoners at Sing Sing were the first to
be examined by Davenport's researchers under a year-long joint project
with the Eugenics Record Office.32

In 1916, New York's Senate Commission to Investigate Provision for
the Mentally Deficient held hearings and published a 628-page special
report, including a 109-page bibliography of eugenic books and articles.
The commission's purview included imposed sterilization. Among its cited
resources were eugenic county surveys in Westchester County supervised
by Dr. Gertrude Hall, one of the eugenic experts in Mrs. Harriman's circle
and the director of the Bureau of Analysis and Investigation.33

Many officials were easily swayed by the stacks of scientific documentation
eugenicists could amass. New York's State Hospital Commissioncomprised
of a coterie of leading physicians-emerged from meetings with
Davenport at the Eugenics Record Office in July of 1917 expressing a new
determination to concentrate on the feebleminded-even though there
was not yet a definition for feeblemindedness. After the meeting, the commission
announced it would recommend that the state legislature allocate
$10 to $20 million during the next decade to eugenically address the insane
and feebleminded. The ERO pledged its assistance in the effort.34

New York State was hardly alone. Indiana's legislature appropriated
$10,000 for a Committee on Mental Defectives in 1917. Initial research
was completed by ERO field workers Clara Pond (in Jasper, Wabash and
Elkhart counties) and Edith Atwood (in Shelby, Vanderburgh and Warrick
counties). A commission to investigate the feebleminded was empanelled in
Utah. Arkansas did the same. One ERa field worker, Ethel Thayer, traveled
some 10,000 miles during six months in 1917, interviewing 472 individuals
to produce what the ERa termed "more or less complete histories
of84 [families],"35

There was no way for the public to know if a seemingly unrelated government
agency was actively pursuing a eugenic agenda. The United States
Department of Agriculture maintained an active role in America's eugenics
movement by virtue of its quasi-official domination of the American
Breeders Association. Various Department of Agriculture officials either
sponsored or officially encouraged eugenic research. Agricultural department
meetings went beyond the bounds of simple agronomy; they often
encompassed human breeding as well. On November 14, 1912, Professor
C. L. Goodrich, at the Washington office of the Department of Agriculture,
was asked by a colleague in the USDA's Columbia, South Carolina,
office whether two Tegro siblings, both with six fingers on each hand,
should be brought to an ABA meeting at the National Corn Exposition for
eugenic evaluation. Professor Goodrich, who controlled the presentations
of the ABA's Eugenic Section, replied a few days later, "Have the children
brought I will put you on the program for a paper before the Eugenics
section "36

On November 26, 1912, the USDA's Office of Farm Management
wrote to Davenport on official government letterhead suggesting that the
ERa assign "a eugenic worker on the case and develop the facts in relation
to the negro's family by the time of the meeting of the Breeder's
Association in Columbia [South Carolina] in February." Receptive to the
idea, Davenport replied three days later, "Perhaps he can present one or
more of the polydactyls to the eugenics section."37

On January 3, 1913, Davenport wrote to George W. Knorr at the
USDA in Washington asking, "If not too late, please add two titles to the
eugenics program." One of these would be Davenport's own last-minute
entry, "A Biologist's View of the Southern Negro Problem." Knorr wrote
back asking for a lecturer on eugenic immigration issues. On January 8,
Davenport referred Knorr to a Harvard eugenicist specializing in immigration,
and reminded the department to make sure "the meeting of the eugenics
section [was all arranged] at the Insane Asylum." That same day,
Davenport wrote his colleague at Harvard, asking him to contact the USDA
to get on the program. On January 10, Davenport asked Knorr to approve
yet another eugenics paper entitled "Heredity ofLeft-handedness."38

Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson doubled as president of the
ABA. At the group's 1913 convention, he rallied the forces. In his presidential
address, Wilson declared, "You have developed in your eugenics
section a great experiment station and institution of research, with a splendid
building called the Eugenics Record Office .... Your laboratory material
is the heredity that runs through the veins of the good, bad, and indifferent
families of our great country ... assembling the genetic data of
thousands of families ... making records of the very souls of our people, of
the very life essence of our racial blood .... Those families which have in
them degenerate blood will have new reason for more slowly increasing
their kind. Those families in whose veins runs the blood of royal efficiency,
will have added reason for that pride which will induce them to
multiply their kind." Wilson also encouraged the ERO to seek even
greater funding. "I observe that you are publicly asking for a foundation of
half a million dollars," he said. "Twenty times that sum, or ten millions,
would come nearer the mark. "39

The speeches presented at obscure agricultural meetings in South
Carolina, the eugenic surveys in small Indiana counties or by major New
York State agencies, the eugenics courses taught in small colleges or in
prestigious universities-none of this eugenic activity remained a local
phenomenon. It quickly accumulated and became national news for a
movement hungry for the smallest advance in its crusade. Therefore in
January of 1916, the ERO launched a new publication, Eugenical News,
which was edited by Laughlin and reported endless details of the movement's
vicissitudes. Approximately 1,000 copies of each issue were distributed
to activists. From the most important research to the most obscure
minutia, an eager audience of committed eugenic devotees would read
about it in Eugenical News. Almost every administrative proposal, every legislative
measure, every academic course, every speech and organizational
development was reported in this publication.4o

When field worker Clara Pond began her eugenic duties at the New
York Police Department on January 15, 1917, it was reported in the
February issue. When the ERO received records of 128 family charts from
Morgan County, Indiana, it was reported. When the Village for Epileptics
at Skillman, New Jersey, contributed 798 pages of data on its patients, it was
reported. When Laughlin spoke before the Illinois Corn Growers
Convention at the University of Illinois, it was reported. When Dr. Walter
Swift of the Speech Disorder Clinic wrote on inherited speech problems in
the Review of Neurology and Psychiatry, his article was reviewed in depth.
When Yerkes paid a courtesy visit to the Eugenics Record Office in Cold
Spring Harbor, it was reported. When Congress overrode President
Wilson's veto of an immigration bill, the vote tallies were reported. When
the state of Delaware appropriated $10,000 for an institution for the feebleminded,
it was reported. When eugenic field worker Elizabeth Moore took
up gardening at her home in North Anson, Maine, this too was reported.41

No legislative development was too small, nor was any locale too
obscure for coverage. Indeed, the more obscure the eugenic development,
the more enthusiastic the reportage seemed. The more significant the
research or legislative effort, the more readers looked to Eugenical News for
information and guidance. In effect, Eugenical News offered the movement
organizational, scientific, legislative and theoretical cohesion.

Eventually, the eugenics movement and its supporters began to speak a
common language that crept into the general mindset of many of America's
most influential thinkers. On January 3, 1913, former President Theodore
Roosevelt wrote Davenport, "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."
Episcopalian Bishop John T. Dallas of Concord, New Hampshire, issued a
public statement: "Eugenics is one of the very most important subjects that
the present generation has to consider." Episcopalian Bishop Thomas F.
Gailor of Memphis, Tennessee, issued a similar statement: "The science of
eugenics ... by devising methods for the prevention of the propagation of
the feebleminded, criminal and unfit members of the community, is ... one
of the most important and valuable contributions to civilization." Dr. Ada
Comstock, president of Radcliffe College, declared publicly, "Eugenics is
'the greatest concern of the human race.' The development of civilization
depends upon it." Dr. Albert Wiggam, an author and a leading member of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science, pronounced his
belief: "Had Jesus been among us, he would have been president of the
First Eugenic Congress."42

While many of America's elite exalted eugenics, the original Galtonian
eugenicists in Britain were horrified by the sham science they saw thriving
in the United States and taking root in their own country. In a merciless
1913 scientific paper written on behalf of the Galton Laboratory, British
scientist David Heron publicly excoriated the American eugenics of
Davenport, Laughlin, and the Eugenics Record Office. Using the harshest
possible language, Heron warned against "certain recent American work
which has been welcomed in this country as of first-class importance, but
the teaching of which we hold to be fallacious and indeed actually dangerous
to social welfare." His accusations: "Careless presentation of data, inaccurate
methods of analysis, irresponsible expression of conclusions, and
rapid change of opinion.,,·n

Heron lamented further, "Those of us who have the highest hopes for
the new science of Eugenics in the future are not a little alarmed by many
of the recent contributions to the subject which threaten to place
Eugenics ... entirely outside the pale of true science .... When we find such
teaching-based on the flimsiest of theories and on the most superficial of
inquiries-proclaimed in the name of Eugenics, and spoken of as 'entirely
splendid work,' we feel that it is not possible to use criticism too harsh, nor
words too strong in repudiation of advice which, if accepted, must mean
the death of Eugenics as a science."44

Heron emphasized "that the material has been collected in a most unsatisfactory
manner, that the data have been tabled in a most slipshod fashion,
and that the Mendelian conclusions drawn have no justification whatever.
... " He went so far as to say the data had been deliberately skewed. As
an example, he observed that "a family containing a large number of defectives
is more likely to be recorded than a family containing a small number
of defectives."45 In sum, he called American eugenics rubbish.

Davenport exploded.

He marshaled all his academic and rhetorical resources and the propagandists
of the ERO. Davenport and A. ]. Rosanoff combined two defensive
essays and a journal article denouncing Dr. Heron's criticism into a
lengthy ERO Bulletin. The bulletin, entitled Reply to the Criticism of Recent
American U70rkby Dr. Heron of the Galton Laboratory, was circulated to hundreds
of public administrators, eugenic theorists and others whose minds
needed to be swayed, assuaged or buttressed.46

As keeper of the eugenic flame and defender of its faithful, Davenport
correctly portrayed Dr. Heron's assault to be against "my reputation
[which] I regard as of infinitely less importance than the acquisition of
truth; and if! resent these evil innuendoes it is not for myself at all, but only
for the protection of the scientific interests which I am, for the time, custodian."
In a rambling, point-by-point confutation, Davenport belittled
Heron's attack as a vendetta by his Galtonian enemies in England. He
explained away his faulty data as typographical. His rebuttal was rich with
abstruse formulas in support of his subverted thesesY

In Davenport's mind, Mendel's laws hovered as the sacred oracle of
American eugenics, the rigid determiner of everything tall and short,
bright and dim, right and wrong, strong and weak. All that existed in the
chaotic pool of life was subservient to Mendel's tenets as res pun by
Davenport. Indeed, Davenport cherished those tenets as if chiseled by the
finger of God. Come what may, Davenport declared he would never "deny
the truth of Mendelism." He defiantly proclaimed, "The principles of
heredity are the same in man and hogs and sun-flowers."48

But the attacks did not stop. True, eugenics had ascended to a scientific
standard throughout the nation's academic and intellectual circles, becoming
almost enshrined in the leading medical journals and among the most
progressive bureaucrats. The word itself had become a catchphrase of the
intelligentsia. But soon the sweeping reality of the eugenics movement's
agenda started filtering down to the masses. Average people slowly began
to understand that the ruling classes were planning a future America,
indeed a future world, that would leave many of them behind. Sensational
articles began to appear in the press.

"14 million to be sterilized" was the warning from the Hearst syndicate
of newspapers in late September of 1915. Alexander Graham Bell, long
queasy about Davenport's obsession with defectives, reacted at once, contacting
Cold Spring Harbor for some reassurance. Davenport wrote back
on September 25: "I am very sorry that ripples of a very sensational fake
article about the plans of the Eugenics Record Office to sterilize 14 million
Americans has rippled"-he crossed out "has rippled"-" ... have disturbed
the placid waters about [Bell's vacation home in] Beinn Bhreagh [Nova
Scotia]." Davenport assured Bell he would warn others "against believing
things ... in the Hearst papers." Bell, only briefly comforted, wrote back,
"Your note ... is a great relief to me, as I was naturally disturbed over the
newspaper notices-even though I didn't believe them."49

The articles did not stop, however. Crusading journalists and commentators
began to expose American eugenics as a war of the wealthy against
the poor. On October 14, 1915, the Hearst newspapers syndicated a series
of powerful editorials pulling no punches. Typical was an editorial in the
San Francisco Daily News:

WHERE TO BEGIN

The millions of Mrs. Harriman, relict of the great railroad "promoter,"
assisted by other millions of Rockefeller and Carnegie, are to be devoted to
sterilization of several hundred thousands of American "defectives" annually,
as a matter of eugenics.

It is true that we don't yet know all that the millions of our plutocracy
can do to the common folks. We see that our moneyed plutocrats can own
the governments of whole states, override constitutions, maintain private
armies to shoot down men, women and children, and railroad innocent
men to life imprisonment for murder, or lesser crimes. And IF WE SUBMIT
TO SUCH THINGS, we ought not to be surprised if they undertake
to sterilize all those who are obnoxious to them.

Of course, the proposition depends much on who are to be declared
"defective. "

The old Spartans, with war always in view, used to destroy, at birth,
boys born with decided physical weakness. Some of our present-day
eugenists go farther and damn children before their birth because of parents
criminally inclined. Then we have eugenic "defectives" in the insane
and the incurably diseased. The proposition is not wholly without justification.
But isn't there another sort of "defective," who is quite as dangerous as
any but whom discussion generally overlooks, especially discussion by the
senile long-haired pathologists, and long-eared college professors involved
in the Harriman-Rockefeller scheme to sterilize?

A boy is born to millions. He either doesn't work, isn't useful, doesn't contribute
to human happiness, is altogether a parasite, or else he works to add to
his millions, with the brutal, insane greed for more and more that caused the
accumulation of the inherited millions. Why isn't such THE MOST DANGEROUS
"DEFECTIVE" OF ALL? Why isn't the prevention of more
such progeny THE FIRST DUTY OF EUGENICS? Such "defectives"
directly attack the rights, liberties, happiness, and lives of millions.

Talk about inheriting criminal tendencies. Is there a ranker case of such
than the inheritance of Standard Oil criminality as evidenced in the slaughter
of mothers and their babes at Ludlow?

Sterilization of hundreds of thousands of the masses, by the Harrimans
and Rockefellers? LET'S FIRST TRY OUT THE "DEFECTIVENESS"
OF THE SONS OF BILLIONAIRES!

Let's first sterilize where sterilization will mean something immediate,
far-reaching and thorough in the way of genuine eugenics!50

More letters flew across the country as leading scholars began assessing
the movement's image. Davenport worked on damage control. He began
writing letters. Among the first was to Thomas D. Eliot, a major eugenic
activist then living in San Francisco. "The article upon which the editorial
in the San Francisco Daily News was based was entirely without any foundation
in fact," Davenport assured Eliot. "The writer for the Hearst syndicate
supplied them with an absolutely baseless and basely false article about
imaginary plans of the Eugenics Record Office. As a matter of fact, the
Eugenics Record Office exists only for the purpose of making studies primarily
in human heredity and has nothing whatsoever to do with propaganda
for sterilization. After the printing of this false article in scores of
papers in this country my attention was called to it, and I wrote a letter to
the New York American and requested them to publish the letter. This they
refused to do .... "; I

Davenport scoffed, "We know the name of the unfortunate who wrote
the article for the Hearst syndicate. To my protestation, he replies only that
he proposes to publish a series of articles, intimating that he has worse ones
in store [than] that already published. I tell you this so that you may be prepared
for the future. It is quite within the range of possibility that he may
state that the Rockefeller, Carnegie and Harriman millions are to be
devoted to forcing the whites of the South to have children by the blacks in
order to grade up the blacks. I can imagine even worse things." He dismissed
Hearst readers as "paranoiacs and imbeciles," and urged his colleagues
to stand fast.;2 But the press continued.

On February 17, 1916, a New :YorkAmerican reporter named Miss
Hoffinann insisted on traveling up to New Haven, Connecticut, to interview
the prominent Yale economist Irving Fisher about eugenics. Fisher, a
leading raceologist, occupied a central role in the eugenics movement. The
reporter had latched onto a sentence in a leading eugenic publication,
which asserted, "Many women of the borderline type of feeblemindedness,
where mental incapacity often passes for innocence, possess the qualities of
charm felt in children, and are consequently quickly selected in marriage."
Fisher did not know where the correct documentation was to support such
a statement. "I should have turned her loose on you," he wrote to
Davenport, "had I not known your sentiment on reporters especially of the
Hearst journals! ... Much as I dislike the tone of their articles ... if we do
not help them, they will do us positive injury ... [and yet] in spite of their
sensationalism, we can utilize them to create respect for the eugenics idea
in the mind of the public."B

Fisher appended a typical progress report to his letter. "You will be glad
to know," he wrote, "that I have interested the Dean here in trying to
secure something in eugenics. You will doubtless hear from him .... I am
delighted to see how other colleges have taken the matter up. Yale seems to
be a little behind in this matter."54

Davenport was relieved that Fisher had steered the New lOrk American
reporter elsewhere, admitting, "I might have reacted in a way which I
should subsequently have regretted."" Such scandals in the press
prompted Alexander Graham Bell to distance himself from the eugenics
movement.

Davenport surely sensed Bell's apprehension. When it came time to call
the Spring 1916 scientific board meeting, Davenport struggled with the
phrasing of his letter to Bell. "Do you authorize call for meeting here April
Eighth." Vigorously scratched out. Slight variation: "Do you authorize me
to call meeting here on April Eighth." Vigorously scratched out. Start
again: "Do you .... " Scratched out, starting once more: "Shall I issue call
Director's meeting here on April Eighth."56

On the afternoon of April 8, 1916, too impatient for a letter to arrive,
Bell telephoned a message to Cold Spring Harbor.

Dr. Davenport: Greatly regret inability to attend meeting of Eugenics
Board as I had intended. Detained at last moment by important matters,
demanding my immediate attention. I believe I have now served for three
years as chairman. I would be much obliged if you would kindly present my
resignation on the Board and say that it would gratify me very much to have
some member now appointed to the position.

With best wishes for a successful meeting,

Alexander Graham Be1l5?

Davenport was surely shaken. He sent off a note asking if Bell would at
least stay on until the end of the year as chairman of the board of scientific
directors; at the same time, he assured Bell that in the future more emphasis
would be placed on positive human qualities. Bell reluctantly agreed,
but his connection to the movement was now permanently frayed.

On April 20, 1916, Bell agreed to chair just one more meeting, the
December 15 session, but with "the understanding that I will then resign as
Chairman of the Board." He added, "I am very much pleased to know from
your letter that more attention is now to be paid to the Eugenic positive
side than heretofore."58

Just before the meeting, Bell once again reminded Davenport that he
would participate in the year-end meeting, but "I hope that you do not forget
that I am to be allowed to resign from the chairmanship at this meet
ing." After that December meeting, Bell severed his relations with the
movement altogether. In a polite but curt letter, Bell informed Davenport,
"I will no longer be associated with yourself and the other directors. With
best wishes for the continuance of the work, and kind regards."59

By the end of 1917, Mrs. Harriman's privately funded Eugenics Record
Office had merged with the Carnegie Institution's Experimental Station.
Both entities were headed by Davenport. They existed virtually side-byside
at Cold Spring Harbor, and to a large extent functioned as extensions
of one another. This created a consolidated eugenic enterprise at Cold
Spring Harbor. To facilitate the legal merger of what everyone knew was an
operational fact, Mrs. Harriman deeded the ERO's existing assets plus a
new gift of $300,000 to the Carnegie Institution, thus providing for the
ERO's continued operation. As part of the merger, the ERO transferred its
collection of 51,851 pages of family documentation and index cards on
534,625 individuals. Each card offered lines for forty personal traits.6o

The science of eugenics was now consolidated under the sterling international
name of the Carnegie Institution. Eugenics was stronger than ever.

***

Eugenics did not reform despite its public pillorying. The movement continued
to amass volumes of data on families and individuals by combining
equal portions of gossip, race prejudice, sloppy methods and leaps of logic,
all caulked together by elements of actual genetic knowledge to create the
glitter of a genuine science.

A statistical study found that fewer than 12 percent of Negro songs
were in a minor key. "It tends to justify the general impression that the
negro is temperamentally sunny, cheerful, optimistic," reported Eugenical
News. As such, the study purveyed as scientific evidence that while "slave
songs ... refer to 'hard trials and tribulations,'" the genetic constitution of
egroes under American apartheid nonetheless displayed a "dominant
mood ... of jubilation .... "61

Eugenicists began compiling long lists of ship captains and their progeny
to identify an invented genetic trait called "thalassophilia," that is, an
inherited love of the sea. Eugenical News listed several captains who died or
were injured in shipwrecks. "Such hardy mariners do not call for our sympathy,"
declared Eugenical News, "they were following their instinct."62

Behaviors, mannerisms, and personal attributes that we now understand
to be shaped by environment were all deemed eugenic qualities.
"When we look among our acquaintances," Davenport wrote, "we are
struck by their diversity in physical, mental, and moral traits ... they may be
selfish or altruistic, conscientious or liable to shirk ... for these characteristics
are inheritable .... "63

In painstakingly compiled family trait booklets, each numbered at the
top right for tracking, the most personal and subjective measurements were
recorded as scientific data. Family trait booklet #40688, of the Bohemian
farmer Joseph Chloupek and his Irish wife Mary Sullivan, was typical.
Question 12 asked for "special tastes, gifts or peculiarities of mind or
body." For Chloupek, his traits were noted as "reading, affectionate, firm."
His wife was noted as "very religious ... broad minded in her religious attitude
toward others." The rest of the family was similarly assessed, including
Chloupek's mother, Eugenia, who was marked as a "good mother."64

Approximations were frequently entered as authentic scientific measurements.
Question 13 called for the height either in inches, or, if preferred,
with any of four notations: "very short, short, medium tall, very
tall." Question 15 recorded hair color as "albino, flaxen, yellow-brown,
light brown, medium brown, dark hair, black." Question 17 asked for the
individual's skin to be described as "blond, intermediate, brunette, dark
brown, black Negro, yellow, yellow-brown or reddish-brown." Question
26 asked for visual acuity, and the choices were "blind, imperfect, strong, or
color blind"; in the case of the Chloupek family, the most common
response was "good."65

A second genealogical tool, the family folder, recorded such eugenic
"facts" as "participation in church activities" and "early moral environment."
Special areas were set aside for notations as to whether the individual
was known for "interest in world events or neighborhood gossip," or
"modesty," or whether the person "holds a grudge." Question fifty-six
asked for an evaluation of the individual's "optimism, patriotism, care for
the good opinion of others."66

In ERG Bulletin #13, How to Make a Eugenical Family Study, coauthored
by Davenport and Laughlin, field workers and information recorders were
informed that eugenic authorities would explain the "eugenical meaning of
the facts recorded."67

Even within the accepted parameters, the data was often only approximated.
Heights for several dozen Jewish children were charted in one
report with a special entry, "These weights recorded by nurses ... are considered
by Dr. Cohen as more accurate than those recorded on March 20."
Physician Brett Ratner submitted extensive physical measurements of newborns,
with a caveat. "The sheet ... [includes] the length," he explained,
"which is taken by the attending doctor by suspending the child by its legs,
which is of course very inaccurate, and the chest was also done by the
attending physician. Therefore, I cannot vouch for the chest and length
measurement. The weights, however, are all absolutely accurate."68

Often, the science was filtered through personal animus, colored language
and even name-calling. Character flaws were frequently accentuated
in clinical eugenic descriptions, almost as if to pass the reader a cue. "James
Dack was commonly known as 'Rotten Jimmy,'" read one typical description.
"The epithet was given because of the diseased condition of his
legs ... although the term is said to have been equally applicable to his
moral nature." No wonder Goddard admitted that in writing his revered
eugenic text on the Kallikak family, "We have made rather dogmatic statements
and have drawn conclusions that do not seem scientifically warranted
by the data. We have done this because it seems necessary to make
these statements and conclusions for the benefit of the lay reader .... " In
Vermont, a careful and methodical statewide survey condemned one man
as eugenically unfit based on the genetic datum that he was "a big hopeless
good for nothing."69

Davenport and Laughlin brashly predicted, "The day will yet come
when among the first questions, asked by an employer of the applicant for a
position, will be those relating to the occupations of his kin and the success
they have had in such occupations."

Correcting the American ethic with a eugenic voice, they promulgated
the stunning admonishment, "There are those who adhere to the obviously
false doctrine that men are born equal and therefore it really doesn't matter
who marries whom."70

The men and women of eugenics wielded the science. They were supported
by the best universities in America, endorsed by the brightest
thinkers, financed by the richest capitalists. They envisioned millions of
America's unfit being rounded up and incarcerated in vast colonies, farms
or camps. They would be prohibited from marrying and forcibly sterilized.
Eventually-perhaps within several generation-only the white Nordics
would remain. When their work was done at home, American eugenicists
hoped to do the same for Europe, and indeed for every other continent,
until the superior race of their Nordic dreams became a global reality.

Yet the very first sentence of the United States Constitution protected
future generations. "We the People of the United States, in Order to form
a more perfect Union, establish Justice ... secure the Blessings of Liberty
to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Consti
tution."7l Posterity would be the monumental issue over which the forces
of eugenics struggled. To eugenicists, the future of America and humanity
itself was at stake.

In 1924, they would wage a pitched battle against a lone adversary. This
adversary would not be a crusading journalist or an outspoken politician,
but rather a helpless Virginia teenager named Carrie Buck. Declared feebleminded,
she was actually a good student in a family of good students.
Called a menace to society and to the future of mankind, she was actually
just poor white trash from the back streets of Charlottesville, Virginia. This
simple yet often eloquent girl would make the perfect test case. She was
selected for exactly this reason.

***

Carrie Buck's mother, Emma, was one of Charlottesville's least respected
citizens. Widowed and worthless, living on the margins of society, Emma
was deemed a perfect candidate for feeblemindedness. After World War I,
Virginia had a well-established policy of sweeping its social outcasts into
homes for the feebleminded and epileptic. In Virginia, the two conditions,
feeblemindedness and epilepsy, were virtually synonymous. They were also
synonymous with another diagnosis, shiftlessness, that is, the genetic defect
of being worthless and unattached in life.72

On April 1, 1920, Emma was hauled before a so-called Commission on
Feeblemindedness. Justice of the Peace C. D. Shackleford convened the very
brief hearing required. Physician J. S. Davis conducted the examination,
referred to on the form as "an inquisition." The state's form enumerated sixty
pointed questions. Question two, under Social History and Reaction, asked if
Emma had ever been convicted of a crime. Emma's response: "Prostitution."
In those days any woman might be charged with prostitution, whether for
actually selling her body or simply for conducting hersel f in a fashion morally
repugnant to the local authorities or even to the cop on the beat. Question
eighteen, under Personal and Developmental History, asked if Emma had any
diseases. She responded that she had syphilis. Question eight, under Physical
Condition, asked specifically if Emma had ever had syphilis, to which her
response was yes. Question nine, also under Physical Condition, asked if any
venereal disease was present, and for the third time Emma confirmed that she
had had syphilis. As to her moral character, the hearing officials wrote "notoriously
untruthful." Indeed, question five, under Social History and Reaction,
asked whether she had "conducted ... herself in a proper conjugal manner."
The examiners wrote "No."73

A few minutes later, Emma was officially deemed feebleminded.
Shackleford signed the order of commitment, declaring she was "suspected
of being feebleminded or epileptic." Five days later, Emma was driven to
the Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded. There she was consigned to
Ward Five. She would remain at the colony for the rest of her life.74

Years before, in 1906, when Emma was still married, she had given
birth to a daughter, Carrie. When Emma's husband died, the widow
drifted into the social fringes of Charlottesville. At age three, Carrie was
removed from Emma's custody and placed with another family. There
were no formal adoption proceedings. Charlottesville peace officer J.T.
Dobbs and his wife simply took the child into their Grove Street house.
The Dobbses had a child of their own, approximately Carrie's age. Mrs.
Dobbs needed extra help with the chores. Carrie was good at her chores,
and also did well in school. School records show her performance was
"very good-deportment and lessons." But when Carrie was in sixth
grade, the Dobbses withdrew the girl from school so she could concentrate
on the increasing load of housework-not only for their home on
Grove Street, but for others in the neighborhood that Carrie was "loaned"
to. Although Carrie never felt like she was a part of the Dobbs family, she
was happy to be there. She recalled being obedient, and always considered
herself "a good girl."75

One day in the summer of 1923, seventeen-year-old Carrie was discovered
to be pregnant. She explained that she had been raped. "He forced
himself on me," Carrie later recollected, "he was a boyfriend of mine and
he promised to marry me." Years later, she would accuse a Dobbs nephew
of being the rapist.76

The Dobbses would not listen to her explanations. They wanted
Carrie-and her shame-out of the house at once. As Dobbs was the local
peace officer, and familiar with the legal workings of the county, he knew
just what to do. He filed commitment papers with Justice Shackleford.
Dobbs claimed the girl was feebleminded, epileptic or both, and anyway,
the family could no longer afford to board her. Shackleford scheduled a
commitment proceeding. 77

On January 23,1924, Shackleford convened a brief hearing. Two doctors
attended to render their expert opinions. The Dobbses testified that
Carrie had experienced "hallucinations and ... outbreaks of temper" and
had engaged in "peculiar actions." Carrie was quickly declared "feebleminded"
and transferred to the custody of the Colony for Epileptics and
Feebleminded. For Shackleford, it was the second generation of Bucks he
had sent to the colony-first the mother, Emma, and now her daughter,
Carrie.78

It was not unusual for Virginia to use its Colony for Epileptics and
Feebleminded as a dumping ground for those deemed morally unsuitable.
Classifying promiscuous women as morons was commonplace. The
colony's superintendent, Dr. Albert Priddy, admitted as much in a report:
"The admission of female morons to this institution has consisted for the
most part of those who would formerly have found their way into the redlight
district and become dangerous to society .... "79

But the numbers of morally condemned women were becoming economically
daunting. "If the present tendency to place and keep under custodial
care in State institutions all females who have become incorrigibly
immoral [continues]," he argued, "it will soon become a burden much
greater than the State can carry. These women are never reformed in heart
and mind because they are defectives from the standpoint of intellect and
moral conception and should always have the supervision by officers of the
law and properly appointed custodians." Priddy's solution was the common
eugenic remedy, sterilization.8o

When Carrie was condemned, eugenical sterilizations were not yet
legal in Virginia. Priddy's institution had certainly sterilized many women,
but always as part of "therapeutic" treatment for unspecified types of
"pelvic disease."81 These therapeutic sterilizations on young, unsuspecting
women were recorded as "voluntary," with informed consent transcripts to
prove it. One such transcript read:

Doctor: Do you like movies?

Patient: Yes, sir.

Doctor: Do you like cartoons?

Patient: Yes, sir.

Doctor: You don't mind being operated on, do you?

Patient: No, sir.

Doctor: Then you can go ahead.82

Priddy well understood how far outside the law such sterilizations were.
In 1916, he had been taken to court for sterilizing several members of
another Virginia family. On September 23, 1916, while the hardworking
George Mallory was on shift at a nearby sawmill, his wife Willie and nine
of their dozen children were at home in Richmond. Two family friends
were visiting. Suddenly, two Richmond policemen burst in and declared
the Mallory home "a disorderly house," that is, a brothel. It was later
alleged that one of the policemen actually "made an indecent proposal" to
one of the daughters.83

No matter, the younger children were turned over to the juvenile court,
which, citing "vicious and immoral influences," transferred them to the
Children's Home Society. Willie and her two eldest daughters, Jessie and
Nannie, were confined at the City Detention Home, and then on October
14 referred to the Commission for the Feebleminded. 84

Willie later recalled her experience. "A doctor examined my mind," she
recounted, "and asked if I could tell whether salt was in the bread or not,
and did I know how to tie my shoes. There was a picture hanging on the
wall of a dog. He asked me if it was a dog or a lady. He asked me all sorts of
foolish questions, which would take too long for me to tell you .... Then
the doctor took his pencil and scratched his head and said, 'I can't get that
woman in.'" But the attending juvenile probation officer, Mrs. Roller, was
determined to have the family institutionalized. She told the doctor to
write "unable to control her nerves," and added, "We can get her in for
that."85 He did so.

Mrs. Mallory, Jessie and Nannie were committed for lack of nervous
control. Priddy had them now. Willie and Jessie were sterilized first. In
late 1917, Priddy was getting ready to operate on the other daughter,
Nannie, when he received another in a series of letters from George
Mallory. Proud and strong-willed, Mallory expressed himself in powerful,
if simple, terms. His English was lousy and his spelling atrocious. But his
outrage was palpable. Grammar and form did not matter for Mallory. His
family had been ripped from his home, and he wanted them back. On
November 5, 1917, after several earlier letters were ignored, Mallory
wrote an angry final demand.86

Dr Priddy

Dear sir one more time I am go write to you to ask you about my child I
cannot here from her bye no means I have wrote three orfour times cant
get hereing from her at all. We have sent her a box and I dont no wheather
she recevied them or not. I want to know when can I get my child home
again My family have been broked up on fake pertents same as white slavery.
Dr what busneiss did you have opreatedeing on my wife and daughter
with out my consent. I am a hard working man can take care of my family
and can prove it and before I am finish you will find out that I am. I heard
that some one told you lots of bad news but I have been living with her for
twenty three years and cant no body prove nothing againts my wife they
cant talk anything but cant prove nothing ... just to think my wife is 43
years old and to be treated in that way, you ought to be a shamed of your
seift of opreateding on her at that age just stop and think of how she have
been treated what cause did you have opreateding her please let me no for
there is no law for such treatment I have found that out I am a poor man
but was smart anuf to find that out I had a good home as any man wanted
nine sweet little children now to think it is all broke up for nothing I want
to no what you are go do I earn 75$ a month I dont want my child on the
state I did not put her on there. if you don't let me have her bye easy term
I will get her by bad she is not feeble minded over there working for the
state for nothing now let me no at once I am a human been as well as you
are I am tired of being treated this way for nothing I want my child that is
good understanded let me know before farther notise. Now I want to
know on return mail what are you go do wheather are go let my child
come home Jet me here from her

Verly Truiley

Mr George Mallory

My last letter to you for my child with out trouble don't keep my child
there I have told you not to opreated on my child if you do it will be more
trouble .... 87

Priddy was livid, and wrote Mallory back, threatening his own action.
"Now, don't you dare write me another such letter or I will have you
arrested in a few hours." Implying a threat of surgical consequences, he
added, "If you dare to write me another such communication I will have
you arrested and brought here too." Mallory's spelling was bad, but he
retained an attorney who could spell quite correctly. He sued Priddy for
sterilizing his wife and daughter Jessie. Mallory also filed a writ of habeas
corpus, and by early 1918 his family was returned to him. Although Priddy's
conduct was upheld on appeal, the judge warned Priddy not to sterilize any
other patients until the law was changed.88

Enter Carrie Buck. She would be the test case.

Virginia's legislators had been reluctant to pass a eugenic sterilization
law. "[We] were laughed at by the lawmakers who suggested they might fall
victim to their own legislation," recalled Joseph Dejarnette, superintendent
of the Western State Hospital in Staunton, Virginia. He added, "I really
thought they ought to have been sterilized as unfit."89

In 1922, after numerous state laws had been vetoed or overturned by
the courts on Constitutional grounds, Laughlin completed a massive 502-
page compilation of state eugenical legislation. It was entitled Eugenical
Sterilization in the United States. The dense volume, bristling with state-bystate
legal analysis and precedent, included what lawyers and eugenicists
unanimously declared to be a new "model sterilization law," updated since
previous iterations of Laughlin's model legislation. It was indeed the complete
legislator's guide. Laughlin was certain that a law that followed a rigid
course of due process, proper notification to the patient, adversarial protection
of the patient's rights, and a narrow, nonpunitive, health-based
eugenical sterilization regimen could withstand a U.S. Supreme Court
challenge. Burnishing the report's legal soundness was the fact that it was
not issued by any of the Cold Spring Harbor entities, but was distributed as
an official document of the Municipal Court of Chicago. Judge Olson, who
headed Chicago's Municipal Court, concomitantly served as president of
the Eugenics Research Association. Olson even wrote the introduction,
saluting Laughlin, who "rendered the nation a signal service in the preparation
of this work. ... "90

Laughlin personally sent a copy to Priddy. Now Priddy and his fellow
Virginia eugenicists would carefully follow Laughlin's advice. In the fall of
1923, with a mandate from Virginia's State Hospital Board, Priddy and
colony attorney Aubrey Strode authored comprehensive new legislation
closely resembling the text and format of Laughlin's model statute. By
March 30, 1924, Virginia's eugenics law, which now included numerous
due process safeguards, was finally passed by both state houses and signed
by the governor. It was to take effect on June 17, 1924.91

Although Carrie was condemned as feebleminded on January 23, 1924,
she was not immediately admitted to the colony. Pregnant girls were not
permitted in the facility. On March 28, Carrie gave birth to a daughter,
Vivian. Since Carrie had been declared mentally incompetent, she could
not keep the child. Ironically, the Dobbses took Vivian in.92 Three generations
of Bucks had intersected with].T. Dobbs.

Carrie's arrival at the colony was delayed until June 4, just days before
the new sterilization law took effect. A legal guardian, Robert Shelton,
was properly appointed for her and properly paid $5 per day, just as the
statute and due process required. On September 10, 1924, a colony
review board properly met and ruled that Carrie "is feebleminded and by
the laws of heredity is the probable potential parent of socially inadequate
offspring, likewise afflicted ... , " and as such "she may be sexually steril
ized ... and that her welfare and that of society will be promoted by her
sterilization .... "93

Upon completion of the hearing, the board properly inquired if they
could proceed. Colony attorney Strode properly advised that the Virginia
act "had yet to stand the test of the Courts." Strode later recounted,
"Whereupon, I was instructed to take to court a test case."94

Carrie's guardian, Shelton, was then asked by Strode to appeal the case
"in order that we may test the constitutionality through our state courts,
even to the Supreme Court of the United States." Shelton then secured
ostensibly independent counsel to represent the eighteen-year-old in a
legal challenge scheduled for November 18, 1924. Attorney Irving
Whitehead was selected to represent Carrie. Whitehead was no stranger to
the colony, however, and to many the arrangement seemed little more than
a collusive defense. He was, after all, one of the original three directors
appointed by the governor to manage the colony when it was established in
1910. Whitehead and his fellow trustees appointed Priddy as their first
superintendent. Later, Whitehead had represented the institution on the
State Board of Hospitals. In his official capacity, Whitehead had personally
endorsed the sterilizations of some two dozen women, including the two
Mallory women, and had even lobbied the Virginia legislature for broader
legal authority. A building in the colony complex erected the year before
was actually named after him. The Wednesday before the trial, Priddy recommended
Whitehead for a government position.95

Yet it was Whitehead, a staunch eugenicist, founding father of the
colony and an advocate of sterilization, who was to champion Carrie Buck's
defense.

To bolster the argument that Carrie represented a biological menace,
attention next fell on little Vivian. If the infant could somehow be deemed
mentally defective, the Bucks would represent three generations of imbeciles-
a clear threat to the state. Priddy asked a Red Cross social worker to
send evidence certifying the infant as feebleminded, and was almost certainly
startled to hear back from the social worker: "I do not recall and am
unable to find any mention in our files of having said that Carrie Buck's
baby was mentally defected."96

Priddy dispatched a note to eugenic activist Dr. Joseph Dejarnette,
superintendent of the State Hospital at Staunton. Dejarnette would be
called as a state expert witness. "A special term of the Court of Amherst will
be held ... November 18,1924 to hear. .. the case of Carrie Buck's child, on
which the constitutionality of the sterilization law depends. It is absolutely
necessary that you be present and I would suggest you read up all you car,
on heredity like [the] jukes, callikaks [sic] and other noted families of that
stripe." Priddy added, "I want you to help me in this matter by going over
to Charlottesville ... to get a mental test of Carrie Buck's baby.... The test
you will make will be the usual one in line with the inclosed [sic] test sheet.
We are leaving nothing undone in evidence to this case .... I am enclosing
you a letter from Dr. Laughlin and think you will need it. Please return the
inclosures [sic] as Col. Strode may want them for his files, he having had the
correspondence with Dr. Laughlin."97

Priddy also assured Dejarnette that even though Vivian was only a few
months old, she could still be deemed unfit. "We have an advantage," wrote
Priddy, "in having both Carrie Buck and her mother, Emma, as inmates of
this institution." Once more, the emphasis was on three generations.98

Shortly thereafter, Carrie's seven-month-old daughter Vivian was
examined by a social worker. In a subsequent hearing the social worker was
asked, "Have you any impression about the child?" Emphasizing the word
probabilities, the social worker replied, "It is difficult to judge probabilities
of a child as young as that, but it seems to me not quite a normal baby." In
reply, she was led, "You don't regard her child as a normal baby?" The
social worker cautiously responded, "In its appearance-I should say that
perhaps my knowledge of the mother may prejudice me in that regard, but
I saw the child at the same time as Mrs. Dobbs' daughter's baby, which is
only three days older than this one, and there is a very decided difference in
the development of the babies."99

Once more, the social worker was prompted, "You would not judge the
child as a normal baby?" The social worker answered, "There is a look
about it that is not quite normal, but just what it is, I can't tell." That was
enough for the judge. Vivian was deemed defective, like her mother and
grandmother before her. 100

Priddy also requested expert eugenical testimony from Laughlin, who
would not be able to travel to Virginia for the trial but agreed to file a deposition.
He asked Priddy for Carrie's genealogy to help him prepare a
proper eugenical verdict. Priddy had nothing. "As to our test case," Priddy
wrote Laughlin, "I am very sorry I cannot make you out a genealogical tree
such as you would like to have, but this girl comes from a shiftless, ignorant
and moving class of people, and it is impossible to get intelligent and satisfactory
data .... "101

Laughlin's deposition simply echoed Priddy's offhand words. "These
people belong to the shiftless, ignorant and moving class of anti-social
whites of the South," wrote Laughlin. His expert opinion went on: "Carrie
Buck: Mental defectiveness evidenced by failure of mental development,
having a chronological age of 18 years with a mental age of9 years, according
to Stanford Revision of Binet-Simon Test; and of social and economic
inadequacy; has record during life of immorality, prostitution and untruthfulness;
has never been self-sustaining; has had one illegitimate child, now
about six months old and supposed to be mental defective." 102

Laughlin's deposition then dispatched the mother, Emma Buck.
"Mental defectiveness evidenced by failure of mental development,"
Laughlin averred, "having a chronological age of 52 years, with a mental
age, according to Stanford Revision of Binet-Simon Test, of seven years
and eleven months (7 yrs. 11 mos.); and of social and economic inadequacy.
Has record during life of immorality, prostitution and untruthfulness; has
never been self-sustaining, was maritally unworthy; having been divorced
from her husband on account of infidelity; has had record of prostitution
and syphilis .... "103

Ultimately, Laughlin connected the dots, declaring that Carrie's "one illegitimate
child, [was also] considered feeble-minded." 104 Three generations.
The judge took the case under advisement. While awaiting a decision,
Priddy died of Hodgkin's disease, a cancer of the lymphatic system.
Priddy's assistant,]. H. Bell, replaced him as defendant. Thereafter the case
became known as Buck v. Bell. 105

On April 13, 192 5, the Amherst County Circuit Court upheld the original
decision of the colony's special board. Carrie's attorney, Whitehead,
immediately appealed the decision to the Virginia Court of Appeals. He
petitioned on three Constitutional points: first, deprivation, without due
process, of a citizen's rights to procreate; second, violation of the Fourteenth
Amendment of the Constitution, providing for due process; and
third, a violation of the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, proscribing
cruel and unusual punishment. Whitehead's brief was brief indeed, just
five pages long. On the other hand, colony attorney Strode filed a fortypage
brief carefully documenting the state's police powers and its need to
protect public health and safety. 106

Virginia's Court of Appeals upheld the colony's decision to sterilize
Carrie, denying all claims of cruel and unusual punishment or lack of due
process. 107 For Carrie, and the future of sterilization, there was nowhere to
go but up. The circle of friends staging a collusive Constitutional challenge,
papered wall to wall with documented safeguards and procedural
rectitude, were now ready for their final step. Carrie's case was appealed to
the highest court in America, the United States Supreme Court. The
colony was confident. The board minutes for December 7, 1925, record:
"Colonel Aubrey E. Strode and Mr. 1. P. Whitehead appeared before the
Board and outlined the present status of the sterilization test case and presented
conclusive argument for its prosecution though the Supreme Court
of the United States, their advice being that this particular case was in
admirable shape to go to the court of last resort, and that we could not hope
to have a more favorable situation than this one."108

If the Supreme Court would uphold Carrie Buck's sterilization, the
floodgates of eugenic cleansing would be opened across the United States
for thousands. Carrie's destiny, and indeed the destiny of eugenics, rested
upon nine men-and most heavily on the one man who would ultimately
write the court's opinion. That man was Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.,
considered by many to be America's clearest thinker and most important
judicial authority. 109

***

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. lived a life innervated by the great men of literature,
propelled by his personal acts of courage, and eventually gilded by
the judicial preeminence thrust upon him. He was the best America had to
offer. Born in Massachusetts in 1841, his father was a famous physician,
poet, and essayist. He had achieved literary esteem from his satirical
columns in the Atlantic Monthly, later collected for the anthology Autocrat
of the Breakfast Iable. Young Oliver grew up in the company of his father's
circle of literati, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo
Emerson, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Herman Melville was a neighbor at
the Holmes' summerhouse. I10

It was the law, however, that would capture the imagination of Oliver
Wendell Holmes Jr. Judges and attorneys had peopled the Holmes family
tree for three centuries. A maternal grandfather had sat on the Supreme
Judicial Court of Massachusetts. I I I

Holmes was a Harvard scholar, but he had been brave enough to join
the rush to war in 1861, even before taking the final exams needed for graduation.
He joined the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteers, known as the
Harvard Regiment. He fought valiantly and was wounded three times,
once in the chest at Ball's Bluff, once in the leg at Chancellorsville and once
through the neck at Antietam during the single bloodiest day of the war.
Some thought the scholar-turned-soldier fought to test his own manliness;
others suggested it was for "duty and honor." I12It was probably both.

Certainly, Holmes achieved hero status. One legend claims that when
President Lincoln visited Fort Stevens, near Washington, D.C., Holmes
had served as his escort. At some point the president stood up to get a better
view of something, and a Confederate soldier promptly shot at his stovepipe
hat. Holmes dragged the president down, admonishing, "Get down, you
damn fool!" Far from insulted, a grateful Lincoln replied, "Goodbye,
Captain Holmes. I'm glad to see you know how to talk to civilians." I13

Even amid the wounds of war, Holmes never lost his fascination
with the great thinkers. While recovering from injuries sustained at
Chancellorsville, Holmes read the latest philosophical treatises. After the
war, he returned to his beloved Harvard to earn a law degree and write
legal theory. I14

Soon, Holmes' rapier-like pronouncements on the purpose of American
law as a champion of the people's will began to shape legal thought in
the nation. He saw the law as a living, organic expression of the people, not
just a sterile codex. "The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience,"
Holmes lectured. "The felt necessities of the time, the prevalent
moral and political theories, intuitions of public policy, avowed or unconscious,
even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow men, have
had a good deal more to do than the syllogism in determining the rules by
which men should be governed. The law embodies the story of a nation's
development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it
contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics."lI5

His rise was rapid. In March of 1881, Holmes' provocative lectures on
the nature of law were compiled into an anthology, The Common Law. It
was an immediate success. Within ten months of the book's publication, in
January of 1882, Holmes was elected a Harvard law professor by the university
faculty. His reputation as an authority on jurisprudence widened.
On December 8 of that same year, before serving his first full year as a professor,
the governor of Massachusetts sent an urgent request for Holmes to
leave Harvard and assume a seat as associate justice on the Massachusetts
Supreme Court. So pressed was the governor that he implored Holmes to
reply by 3:00 P.M. of the same day. Holmes replied on time and accepted the
position. In 1899, Holmes was appointed chief justice of the Massachusetts
Supreme Court.1l6

In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt, impressed with Holmes' growing
juridical prestige, appointed Holmes to the U.S. Supreme Court. There,
Holmes assumed a legendary status as a defender of the Constitution and
proud expositor of unpopular opinions that nonetheless upheld the rule of
law. For more than a quarter century, his name was virtually synonymous
with the finest principles of the legal system. During his tenure on the highest
bench, he wrote nearly one thousand valued opinions. 1 17

Holmes also became famous for powerful dissents, 173 in all. Many
championed and clarified the most precious elements of free speech. In one
such dissent, he argued "the ultimate good desired is better reached by free
trade in ideas-that the best of truth is the power of the thought to get
itself accepted in the competition of the market .... " In 1928, he enunciated
the lasting precept: "If there is any principle of the Constitution that
more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of
free thought-not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom
for the thought we hate." Yet Holmes was wise enough to assert that "the
most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely
shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic."118

Indeed, in 1931, his ninetieth birthday celebration would be an event
for the nation, broadcast over the Columbia Radio System. Speeches
lauded him as "America's most respected man oflaw."J 19

Into the hands of Oliver Wendell Holmes, defender of the noblest ideal
of American jurisprudence, was Carrie Buck commended.

Buck v. Bell would be decided in May of 1927. But the eighty-six-yearold
Holmes was in many ways defined by the Civil War and ethically
shaped by the nineteenth century. While recovering from the wounds of
Chancellorsville, his reading included Spencer's Social Statics, the turningpoint
tract that advocated social Darwinism and so significantly influenced
Galtonian thought. Spencer argued the strong over the weak, and believed
that human entitlements and charity itself were false and against nature.
Indeed, Holmes' 1881 lecture series in The Common Law also asserted that
the idea of inherent rights was "intrinsically absurd."J20

Moreover, the warrior-scholar seemed to believe that "might makes
right." In his essay entitled "Natural Law," Holmes defined truth. "Truth,"
he declared, "was the majority vote of that nation that could lick all others."
J21 In a graduation speech to Harvard's class of 1895, Holmes declared
the sanctity of blindly following orders. "I do not know what is true," he
told the audience. "I do not know the meaning of the universe. But in the
midst of doubt, in the collapse of creeds, there is one thing I do not
doubt ... that the faith is true and adorable which leads a soldier to throw
away his life in obedience to a blindly accepted duty, in a cause he little
understands, in a plan of a campaign of which he has no notion, under tactics
of which he does not see the use."122

While Holmes' influential Supreme Court opinions and dissents exemplified
and eloquently immortalized the highest virtues of American
jurisprudence, his private exchanges reveal a different man. Holmes reviled
"do-gooders" and in 1909 he quipped to a friend, "I doubt if a shudder
would go through the spheres if the whole ant-heap were kerosened." In
1915, writing to John Wigmore, dean of Harvard Law School, Holmes
sneered at "the squashy sentimentalism of a big minority" of people, who
made him "puke." He was similarly nauseated by those "who believe in the
upward and onward-who talk of uplift, who think ... that the universe is
no longer predatory. Oh, bring me a basin."I23

In the years just prior to receiving Buck v. Bell, Holmes expressed his
most candid opinions of mankind. In 1920, writing to English jurist Sir
Frederick Pollack, Holmes confessed, "Man at present is a predatory animal.
I think that the sacredness of human life is a purely municipal idea of
no validity outside the jurisdiction. I believe that force, mitigated so far as it
may be by good manners, is the ultima Tatio, and between two groups that
want to make inconsistent kinds of world I see no remedy except force."'H

He was fond of a certain slogan, and in June of 1922 he repeated it to
British scholar and future Labor Party Chairman Harold J. Laski. "As I
have said, no doubt, often, it seems to me that all society rests on the death
of men. If you don't kill 'em one way you kill 'em another-or prevent their
being born." He added, "Is not the present time an illustration of
Malthus?"125

In 1926, Holmes again confided to Laski, "In cases of difference
between oneself and another there is nothing to do except in unimportant
matters to think ill of him and in important ones to kill him."'26 Shortly
thereafter, Holmes wrote Laski, "We look at our fellow men with sympathy
but nature looks at them as she looks at flies .... "127

The other men of the Supreme Court included Justice Louis Brandeis,
the eminentJ ewish human rights advocate. Another was the racist and anti-
Semite James Clark McReynolds, who refused to even sit or stand next to
Brandeis. The chief justice was former president William Howard Taft. 128

On May 2, 1927, in the plain daylight of the Supreme Court, with only
Justice Pierce Butler dissenting, Justice Holmes wrote the opinion for the
majority.

Carrie Buck is a feeble minded white woman who was committed to the
State Colony above mentioned in due form. She is the daughter of a feeble
minded mother in the same institution, and the mother of an illegitimate
feeble minded child. She was eighteen years old at the time of the trial of
her case in the circuit court, in the latter part of 1924. An Act of Virginia,
approved March 20, 1924, recites that the health of the patient and the welfare
of society may be promoted in certain cases by the sterilization of mental
defectives, under careful safeguard ... without serious pain or substantial
danger to life; that the Commonwealth is supporting in various institutions
many defective persons who if now discharged would become a menace but
if incapable of procreating might be discharged with safety and become
self-supporting with benefit to themselves and to society; and that experience
has shown that heredity plays an important part in the transmission of
insanity, imbecility, &C.129

Holmes' opinion summarized the extensive procedural safeguards
Virginia had applied, and concluded, "There is no doubt that in that
respect the plaintiff in error has had due process of law." 130 He continued,
and in many ways quoted Laughlin's model eugenical law verbatim.

The attack is not upon the procedure but upon the substantive law. It seems to
be contended that in no circumstances could such an order be justified. It certainly
is contended that the order cannot be justified upon the existing
grounds. The judgment finds the facts that have been recited and that Carrie
Buck "is the probable potential parent of socially inadequate offspring, likewise
afflicted, that she may be sexually sterilized without detriment to her
general health and that her welfare and that of society will be promoted by her
sterilization," and thereupon makes the order .... We have seen more than
once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It
would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of
the state for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned,
in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. I 31

Then Holmes wrote the words that would reverberate forever.

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
principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover
cutting the Fallopian tubes.

Three generations of imbeciles are enough.1l2

It was over. Carrie Buck was sterilized before noon on October 19, 1927.
Her file was noted simply: "Patient sterilized this morning under authority
of Act of Assembly .... " Her mother Emma, residing elsewhere in the same
institution, ultimately died some years later, and was ignominiously buried
in a colony graveyard beneath tombstone marker #575. Little Vivian, the
third generation to be declared an imbecile, was raised by the Dobbses, and
enrolled in school, where she earned a place on the honor roll. In 1932,
however, Vivian died of an infectious disease at the age of eight.l33

Eugenical sterilization was now the law of the land. The floodgates
opened wide.

***

In the two decades between Indiana's pioneering eugenical sterilization law
and the Carrie Buck decision, state and local jurisdictions had steadily
retreated from the irreversible path of human sterilization. Of the twentythree
states that had enacted legislation, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New
Jersey, South Dakota and Utah had recorded no sterilizations at all. Idaho
and Washington had performed only one procedure each, and Delaware
just five. Even states with strong eugenics movements had only performed
a small number: Kansas, for instance, had sterilized or castrated 335 men
and women; Nebraska had sterilized 262 men and women; Oregon had
sterilized 313; and Wisconsin had sterilized 144.134

Although some 6,244 state-sanctioned operations were logged from
1907 to July of 192 5, three-fourths of these were in just one state:
California. California, which boasted the country's most activist eugenic
organizations and theorists, proudly performed 4,636 sterilizations and
castrations in less than two decades. Under California's sweeping eugenics
law, all feebleminded or other mental patients were sterilized before discharge,
and any criminal found guilty of any crime three times could be
asexualized upon the discretion of a consulting physician. But even
California's record was considered by leading eugenicists to be "very limited
when compared to the extent of the problem."135

Many state officials were simply waiting for the outcome of the Carrie
Buck case. Once Holmes' ruling was handed down, it was cited everywhere
as the law of the land. New laws were enacted, bringing the total number of
states sanctioning sterilization to twenty-nine. Old laws were revised and
replaced. Maine, which had not performed such operations before, was
responsible for 190 in the next thirteen years. Utah, which had also
abstained, performed 252 in the next thirteen years. South Dakota, which
had performed none, recorded 577 in the next thirteen years. Minnesota,
which had previously declined to act on its legislation, registered 1,880 in
the next thirteen years. 136

The totals from 1907 to 1940 now changed dramatically. North
Carolina: 1,017. Michigan: 2,145. Virginia: 3,924. California's numbers
soared to 14,568. Even New York State sterilized forty-one men and one
woman. The grounds for sterilization fluctuated wildly. Most were
adjudged feebleminded, insane, or criminal; many were guilty of the crime
of being poor. Many were deemed "moral degenerates." Seven hundred
were classed as "other." Some were adjudged medically unacceptable. AJI
told, by the end of 1940, no fewer than 35,878 men and woman had been
sterilized or castrated-almost 30,000 of them after Buck v. Bell.137

And the men and women of eugenics had more plans. They even had a
song, created on the grounds of the Eugenics Record Office in the summer of
1910, which they chanted to the rambunctious popular melodies of the day.
They sang their lyrics to the rollicking jubilation of ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay.

We are Eu-ge-nists so gay,
And we have no time for play,
Serious we have to be
Working for posterity.

Chorus:
Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay,
We're so happy, we're so gay,
We've been working all the day,
That's the way Eu-gen-ists play

Trips we have in plenty too,
Where no merriment is due.
We inspect with might and main,
Habitats of the insane.

Statisticians too are we,
In the house of Carnegie.
If to future good you list,
You must be a Eu-ge-nist. [138]

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