PART TWO: Eugenicide

CHAPTER 10: Origins

One morning in June of 1923, John C. Merriam, the Carnegie Institution's
newly installed president, telephoned Charles Davenport at Cold
Spring Harbor. Anticipation was in the air. A long-awaited eugenic countermeasure,
loosely called "the plan," finally seemed within reach. "The
plan" would create an American eugenic presence throughout the world
even as inferior strains were eliminated in the United States. It was now
important to be politically careful. Merriam, however, was worried about
the behavior of Harry H. Laughlin. 1

Merriam's hopeful phone call to Davenport had been years in the making.
American eugenics had always sought a global solution. From the
beginning, ERG leaders understood all too well that America was a nation
of immigrants. But American eugenicists considered most of the immigrants
arriving after 1890 to be genetically undesirable. This was because
the 1890s witnessed the onset of the great Eastern and Southern European
exodus to the United States, with throngs of non-English-speaking families
crowding into the festering slums of New York and other Atlantic
seaboard cities.2

Eugenicists viewed continued immigration as an unending source of
debasement of America's biological quality. Sterilizing thousands of the
nation's socially inadequate was seen as a mere exercise, that is, fighting
"against a rising tide," unless eugenicists could also erect an international
barrier to stop continuing waves of the unfit. Therefore the campaign to
keep defective immigrants out of the country was considered equally
important to the crusade to cleanse America of its genetic undesirables.
This meant injecting eugenic principles into the immigration process
itself-both in the U.S. and abroad.

Immigration had always been a complex, emotionally-charged concept
in the United States. A thousand valid arguments encompassing economics,
health conditions, overcrowding, demographics and humanitarianism
perpetually fed competing passions to either increase or decrease immigration.
Moreover, the public and political mood twisted and turned as conditions
in the country changed. Between 1880 and 1920, more than twenty
million immigrants had flooded into the United States, mainly fleeing
Europe's upheaval. More than eight million of that number arrived
between 1900 and 1909.3

America's turn-of-the-century welcome was once poetically immortalized
with the injunction: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled
masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming
shore."4 But after World War I, American society was in ethnic, economic
and demographic turmoil. Now-curtailed war industries laid off millions.
Returning "dough boys" needed work as well, only adding to widespread
joblessness. Inflation ate into wages. African-Americans who had gone to
war now expected employment as well; they had fought for their country,
and now they wanted their sliver of the American dream. Dislocation bred
discontent. Massive labor strikes paralyzed much of America during 1919,
with some 22 percent of the workforce joining a job action at some point
during that year.5

Moreover, demographic upheaval was reweaving the very fabric of
American social structure. Boy soldiers raised on the farm suddenly turned
into hardened men during trench warfare; upon returning they often
moved to cities, ready for a new life. Postwar immigration boomed-again,
concentrated in the urban centers. The 1920 census revealed that for the
first time in American history, the population majority had shifted from
rural to urban areas. America was becoming urbanized, and mainly by
immigrants. The 1920 census meant wrenching Congressional reapportionment,
that is, a redrawing of district lines for seats in the House of
Representatives. Eleven rural states were set to lose seats to more urbanized
states. The House had expanded its available seats to 435 to preserve
as much district status quo as possible.6 But immigration remained the focal
point of a political maelstrom.

To further inflame the day, race riots and ethnic strife ripped through
the cities. Mrican-Americans, back from soldiering, were tired of racism;
they wanted a semblance of rights. At the same time, the Ku Klux Klan rose
to never before seen prominence. The threat of Bolshevism worried the
government and the average man. The Red Scare in the summer of 1919
pitted one ism against another. Marxism, communism, Bolshevism, and
socialism sprang into the American consciousness, contending with capitalism.
Race riots against African-Americans and mob violence against
anarchistic Italians and perceived political rabble-rousers ignited throughout
the nation. A man named]. Edgar Hoover was installed to investigate
subversives, mainly foreign-born.7

As the twenties roared, they also growled and groaned about immigration.
Along with the most recent huddled masses came widespread vexation
about the future of American society. Legitimate social fears, ethnic combat
and economic turmoil stimulated a plethora of restrictive reforms,
some sensible, some extreme.

The best and worst of the nation's feelings about immigration were
exploited by the eugenicists. They capitalized on the country's immigration
stresses, as well as America's entrenched racism and pervasive postwar racial
anxiety. Seizing the moment, the men of the Carnegie Institution injected a
biological means test into the very center of the immigration morass, dragging
yet another field of social policy into the sphere of eugenics.

As early as 1912, the eugenics movement's chief immigration strategist,
Harvard professor Robert DeCourcy Ward, advocated eugenic screening
of immigrant candidates before they even reached U.S. shores. Davenport
enthusiastically wrote a colleague, "I thoroughly approve of the plan which
Ward urges of inspection of immigrants on the other side."8 Bolstered by
other eugenic immigration activists, such as ophthalmologist Lucien
Howe, Laughlin became the point man in the movement's efforts. Their
goals were to rewrite immigration laws to turn on eugenic terminology,
and to install an overseas genetic surveillance network.

Key to any success was Albert Johnson. Johnson was an ambitious
small-town personage who would eventually acquire international potency.
Born in 1869 in Springfield, Illinois, on the northern edge of the Mason-
Dixon Line, Johnson grew up during the tempestuous Reconstruction
years. His high school days were spent in provincial Kansas communities,
including the newly created village of Hiawatha, and later Atchison, the
state's river and railroad center. But Johnson was an urban newspaperman
at heart, working first as a reporter on the Herald in St. Joseph, Missouri,
and then the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. Within a few years he had joined the
ranks of east coast journalists, becoming managing editor of Connecticut's
New Haven Register in 1896, and two years later serving as a news editor of
the Washington Post. After his stint with the Post, Johnson moved to
Tacoma, Washington, where he worked as editor of the Tacoma News.
Johnson then returned to his small-town roots as editor and publisher of
the local newspaper in Hoquiam, Washington. In 1912, while publisher, he
successfully ran for Congress. Johnson chaired the House Committee on
Immigration and Naturalization for twelve years, beginning in 1919. In
that pivotal position, Johnson would shape American immigration policy
for decades to come.9 During his tenure, Johnson acted not only as a legislator,
but also as a fanatic raceologist and eugenicist.

Even before Johnson rose to chair the Immigration Committee,
Congress had enacted numerous immigration restrictions that were reactive,
not eugenic, in nature, even if the legislation employed much of the
same terminology. For example, a 1917 statute barred immigration for "all
idiots, imbeciles, feebleminded persons, epileptics, insane persons ... [and]
persons of constitutional psychopathic inferiority." Laughlin and his colleagues
wanted to rewrite these classifications along strictly biological and
racial lines. His idea? New legislation to create a corps of eugenic "immigration
attaches" stationed at American consulates across Europe and
eventually the entire world. These consuls would exclude "all persons sexually
fertile ... who cannot ... demonstrate their eugenical fitness ... mental,
physical and moral." Laughlin's proposed law was of paramount importance
to eugenic stalwarts. As a leading immigration activist told
Davenport in an October 1, 1920, letter, any new system would need to
"heavily favor the Nordics" and ensure that "Asiatics, Alpines and
Meds ... [are] diminished."10

The Journal of Hel'edity, formerly the American Breeders Magazine,
trumpeted one of the movement's rationales for overseas screening in an
article entitled "Immigration Restriction and World Eugenics." The article
declared, "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.""

Premier racial theorist Madison Grant, president of the Eugenics
Research Association and vice president of the Immigration Restriction
League, was a close ally and confidant ofJohnson's. Grant's influence with
Congress on immigration was a recognized asset for the eugenics movement,
and was well utilized. Davenport would periodically send him materials,
including confidential reports done by social workers on individual
New York immigrants deemed defective, "which you may be able to use
with Congress." As far as Johnson was concerned, any immigration was too
much immigration. In fact, Johnson had already introduced without success
an emergency measure to suspend all immigration for two years.'2

It wasn't long before Laughlin became the designated eugenic authority
for Johnson's committee. Laughlin began in 1920 by offering Johnson the
same definition of the "socially inadequate" previously rejected by the
Census Bureau, together with the same flawed data. Unlike the Census
Bureau, however, Johnson readily accepted these notions. He invited
Laughlin to testify before a full House committee to formally espouse his
raceology and lobby for the new legislation. 13

Laughlin enthusiastically testified for two mornings, on April 16 and
17, 1920, invoking a gamut of eugenic arguments, from the history of the
Jukes to the Tribe ofIshmael to the high cost of institutionalizing defective
stock. At one point, when Laughlin was explaining one of his new terms for
mental incompetence, a committee member interrupted and asked him
how to spell it. Laughlin replied: "M-O-R-O-N. It is a Greek word meaning
a foolish person."14

To stem the supply of morons and stymie further degeneracy, Laughlin
asked Johnson to allow him to enable "testing the worth of immigrants ...
in their home towns, because that is the only place where one can get
eugenical facts .... For example, whether he comes from an industrious or
shiftless family." But just as the terms feeblemindedness and blindness were
vague and fundamentally undefined, the exact nature of shiftlessness was also
unclear. Laughlin assured Johnson that this could be remedied. "General
shiftlessness could easily be made into a technical term," he explained, "by
a little definition in the law. It could be made a technical term by describing
it by a 50-word paragraph .... "15

Laughlin emphasized that the quality and character of the individual
candidate for immigration were not as important as his ancestral pedigree.
"If the prospective immigrant is a potential parent, that is, a sexually fertile
person," testified Laughlin, "then his or her admission should be dependent
not merely upon present literacy, social qualifications and economic
status, but also upon the possession in the prospective immigrant and in his
family stock of such physical, mental, and moral qualities as the American
people desire .... The lesson," he emphasized, "is that ... the family stock
should be investigated, lest we admit more degenerate 'blood.'''16

Johnson, a proud champion of immigration quotas, was greatly
impressed with Laughlin's expertise and saw its usefulness in drafting any
restrictive legislation. The chairman promised to invite Laughlin back as
an expert to help the committee deliberate on his proposal for eugenic
attaches. Laughlin's two-day testimony and proposed law were published
by the House under the title "The Biological Aspects ofImmigration."17

When Laughlin came back to consult, an encouraged Johnson created a
new title for him: "Expert Eugenics Agent." Laughlin was now empowered
to conduct wide-ranging racial and immigration studies, and to present
them as reliable Congressional data. His new authority included the power
to print and circulate official committee correspondence and questionnaires,
and mail them en masse at House expense. The first of these was a
survey entitled "Racial and Diagnostic Record of State Institutions." It was
printed on official House letterhead, with the committee members' names
routinely listed at the top, but now with Laughlin's name added as "Expert
Eugenics Agent." The form asked 370 state institutions-hospitals, prisons,
asylums-in the forty-eight states to report the nationalities, races and
problematic natures of their residents. Perhaps intentionally, private institutions
were not queried, limiting the survey and its resulting data to the
most needy and troubled within immigrant groups.18

Laughlin's target for the survey data was the 1924 legislative session. This
was when temporary immigration quotas, enacted under Johnson's baton in
1921, were scheduled to be revised. Those restrictive quotas had calculated
the percentages of the foreign born nation-by-nation, as enumerated by the
1910 census, and then limited each nation's new annual immigration to only
3 percent of that number. This had the effect of turning America's demographic
clock back to 1910. But to eugenicists, this restrictive quota was not
restrictive enough. Laughlin and his colleagues wanted to turn the clock
back to 1890, before mass influxes from Eastern and Southern Europe had
begun. Laughlin's study of "Racial and Diagnostic Records of State
Institutions" would statistically prove that certain racial and national types
were criminalistic and amoral by genetic nature. 19

But the hundreds of state hospitals, prisons and other institutions
spread across the United States all saw their residents' ancestries through
different eyes using different terminology. To guide institutions in standardizing
their responses, Laughlin circulated a supplemental Congressional
publication entitled "Classification Standards to be Followed in
Preparing Data for the Schedule 'Racial and Diagnostic Records of
Inmates of State Institutions.'" His title, "Expert Eugenics Agent," was
printed on the cover. The booklet listed sixty-five racial classifications to be
employed. Classification #15 was German Jew, #16 was Polish Jew, #17 was
Russian Jew, #18 was Spanish-American (Indian), #19 was Spanish-
American (White), #25 was North Italian, #26 was South Italian, #29 was
Russian, #30 was Polish (Polack), #61 was Mountain White, #62 was
American Yankee, #63 was American Southerner, and #64 was Middle
West American. Crimes to be classified for genetic purposes included several
dozen categories ranging from homicide and arson to driving reck
lessly, disorderly conduct, and conducting business under an assumed
name. The data collected would all go into one mammoth Mendelian database
to help set race-based immigration quotas.20

The Carnegie Institution was no bystander to Laughlin's operation.
Laughlin regularly kept Carnegie president John Merriam briefed on the
special Congressional privileges and testing regimens placed at the disposal
of the eugenics movement. Merriam authorized Carnegie statistician J.
Arthur Harris to validate the reliability of the data Laughlin would offer
Congress. However, Laughlin's derogatory raceological assertions were
now becoming more public, and Merriam feared that his views would not
be popular with America's vocal minorities.21

In November of 1922, Laughlin's statistics-filled presentation to
Congress was published as "Analysis of America's Modern Melting Pot." It
contained copious racial and ethnic denigrations. Johnson declared that the
entire session would be published officially with the pejorative subtitle
"Analysis of the Metal and Dross in America's Modern Melting Pot." The
dross was the human waste in American society. Laughlin's testimony
insisted, "Particularly in the field of insanity, the statistics indicate that
America, during the last few years, has been a dumping ground for the
mentally unstable inhabitants of other countries."22

During his testimony about the melting pot, Laughlin told the House,
"The logical conclusion is that the differences in institutional ratios, by
races and nativity groups ... represents real differences in social values,
which represent, in turn, real differences in the inborn values of the family
stocks from which the particular inmates have sprung. These degeneracies
and hereditary handicaps are inherent in the blood." Laughlin asked for
authority to conduct additional racial studies of "Japanese and Chinese ...
Indians ... [and] Negroes." He appended a special statistical qualification
for Jews, explaining, "The Jews are not treated as a separate nation, but are
accredited to their respective countries of birth." As such, he urged a separate
"study of the Jew as immigrant with special reference to numbers and
assimilation."23

Laughlin's constant racial and ethnic derogations were no longer confined
to scholarly journals, but were now echoing in Congressional hearing
rooms. Indeed, a graphic raceological immigration exhibit from a recent
eugenics conference had been installed for public examination in the
Immigration Committee's hearing rooms. All these ethnic and racial revilements
in turn opened Carnegie and the movement to increasingly vituperative
attacks from the large immigrant groups that were becoming ever
more entrenched in the country. But Laughlin was unbending. "If immigration
is to be made a biological or racial asset to the American people,"
he railed, "radical statutory laws must be enforced." At one point he
authored an immigration treatise under the Carnegie Institution's credential,
which concluded that America was being infested by defective immigrants;
as its prime illustration, the treatise offered "The Parallel Case of
the House Rat," which traced rodent infestation from Europe to the rats'
ability "to travel in sailing ships."24

Incendiary or not, Laughlin's rhetoric and eugenic data were producing
results with Congress. It was exactly the scientific justification Johnson
and other government figures needed to implement greater quotas and
deploy the overseas network they wanted. Johnson was increasingly
becoming not just a congressman favoring racial immigration quotas, but a
eugenic organizational leader in his own right. In 192 3, while chairing
Congress's House Immigration and Naturalization Committee, Johnson
also joined an elite new private entity with a Congressional-sounding
name. The new seven-man ad hoc panel was called the "Committee on
Selective Immigration." Chaired by Johnson's friend, raceologist Madison
Grant, and vice-chaired by immigration specialist Robert DeCourcy
Ward, the body also included Laughlin as secretary and eugenic ophthalmologist
Lucien Howe.25

The Committee on Selective Immjgration's first report concluded that
America needed the Nordic race to thrive. "Immigrants from northwestern
Europe furnish us the best material for American citizenship and for the
future up building of the American race. They have higher living standards
than the bulk of southeastern Europeans; are of higher grade of intelligence;
better educated; more skilled; better able to understand, appreciate
and support our form of government." In contrast, the committee concluded,
"Southern and eastern Europe ... have been sending large numbers
of peddlers, sweatshop workers, fruit-stand keepers [and] bootblacks .... "26

Citing the research on "inferiors" produced by Laughlin and other
experts, the eugenic committee assured, "Had mental tests been in operation
[years ago] ... over 6 million aliens now living in this country, free to
vote, and to become the fathers and mothers of future Americans, would
have never been admitted." Relying on Laughlin and other commonly
accepted eugenic principles, the ad hoc committee advocated passage of
Laughlin's overseas surveillance laws and declared that racial quotas "based
on the 1890 census [are] sound American policy .... "27Because Johnson
functioned as both a member of the elite eugenic panel and as chairman of
the House Immigration Committee, eugenic immigration quotas based on
1890 demographics now seemed assured.

Suddenly, in June of 1923, Johnson was thrust into new importance
within the eugenics movement. OnJune 16, he was elected president of the
Eugenics Research Association. Prior to this he hadn't even been a member
of the organization. Nonetheless, this now positioned Johnson, with all his
governmental powers, at the narrow pinnacle of eugenic organizational
leadership. At the same time, Secretary of Labor James]' Davis, whose
department was responsible for the domestic aspects of immigration, had
signaled his willingness to cooperate in creating the overseas eugenic network
to investigate immigrant families. The battle for negative eugenicsprevention-
could now be waged at its source.28

No wonder that four days later, on June 20, Merriam anxiously telephoned
Davenport. Secretary Davis had just sent a letter to President
Warren Harding supporting the eugenic immigration legislation, and
Davis was eager to secure any scientific underpinnings to justify it. Davis
was due to sail to Europe on July 4, and now he contacted Merriam to ask if
Laughlin might accompany him. Merriam answered that the Carnegie
Institution would of course cooperate. That was the exciting part of
Merriam's telephone conversation with Davenport. But then Merriam
expressed his concerns about Laughlin.29

Laughlin was unpracticed in politics and was now expostulating scientific
conclusions that were provoking reproach. Merriam told Davenport
that the Carnegie Institution was quite aware of Laughlin's shortcomings
and wanted to ensure that nothing stood in the way of a quiet success for
"the plan" and its incorporation into the expected 1924 immigration
reforms. Laughlin did not merely verbalize extremist views; many saw him
as a eugenic zealot who would do anything to accomplish his goals. Yet in
this situation, some political caution was necessary. "It is understood,"
Merriam repeated to Davenport moments later, "that the desire to have Dr.
Laughlin associated with the Secretary is not for the purpose of changing
our plans but is rather due to the fact that the Secretary recognizes that our
work ... can be useful to him .... It is not expected that there will be any
modification of our plan, but rather that the Secretary will help to carry out
the plans which you and Dr. Laughlin have worked out."30

Minutes later, Merriam went to the unusual extreme of dictating a
letter to Davenport explicitly reiterating his concerns. "In order that
there may be no misunderstanding ... regarding Dr. Laughlin's work,"
Merriam wrote, "I wish to be frank and say that I have heard a number of
quite different criticisms"-he scratched out the word different and
penned in the word frank-" ... quite frank criticisms of Dr. Laughlin's
conclusions drawn from his recent studies .... Because the genetics and
eugenics work is so important it is necessary that we be exceedingly
guarded, lest conclusions go beyond the limits warranted by the facts and
therefore ultimately diminish the effectiveness of our scientific work."
Merriam closed with a warning, "I am sure that neither you nor Dr.
Laughlin will underestimate my interest in this problem or my recognition
of its very great importance."31

Davenport in turn spoke to Laughlin, advising him that Secretary Davis
had invited Laughlin to join him in sailing to Europe. Davenport also verbalized
Merriam's concerns about Laughlin. When Merriam's letter
arrived in Cold Spring Harbor a few days later, Davenport issued a pointed
memorandum to Laughlin driving home Merriam's censure by quoting
verbatim: "In order that there may be no misunderstanding ... regarding
Dr. Laughlin's work I wish to be frank and say that I have heard a number
of quite frank criticisms of Dr. Laughlin's conclusions drawn from his
recent studies .... Because the genetics and eugenics work is so important,
it is necessary that we be exceedingly guarded lest conclusions go beyond
the limits warranted by the facts and therefore ultimately diminish the
effectiveness of our scientific work .... I am sure that neither you nor Dr.
Laughlin will underestimate my interest in this problem or my recognition
of its very great importance."32

The next Monday, Davis appointed Laughlin "Special Immigration
Agent to Europe," making it official with a certificate. Laughlin had a penchant
for titles that used the word agent. First he was retained as a "Special
Agent of the Bureau of the Census." Then Johnson dubbed him the
House's "Expert Eugenics Agent."33 Now in his latest agent capacity he
would tour Europe for six months, quietly investigating the family trees of
aspiring immigrant families.

If he could establish the scientific numbers necessary to pronounce certain
ethnic and racial groups as either eugenically superior or inferior,
America's whole system of immigration could change. Laughlin wanted all
potential immigrants to be ranked in one of three classes. "Class 1: Not
sexually fertile, now or potentially, and not debarred on account of cacogenesis
[genetic dysfunction]. Class 2: Sexually fertile, now or potentially, and
not debarred on account of cacogenesis. Class 3: Sexually fertile, now or
potentially, and debarred on account of cacogenesis."34 Laughlin now
found himself the syndic of America's genetic future.

Despite the urgings of the Carnegie Institution, Laughlin was unwilling
to sail with Davis in July. He needed more time. Instead, he and his wife
departed aboard the 5.5. Belgoland about a month later, in time to attend an
international eugenics meeting in Lund, Sweden. For the next six months,
Laughlin would travel throughout Europe, setting up shop at American
consulates and rallying logistical support from like-minded European
eugenics groups.35

Scandinavia was first. In Sweden, he contacted the American embassy
in Stockholm, as well as consular officials in Uppsala and Goteborg. In
Denmark, he visited the consulate in Copenhagen. Laughlin concluded
that Sweden was actually hoarding its superior strains by discouraging emigration
through such groups as the Society for the Prevention of Emigration
and an investigation undertaken by the government's Emigration
Commission. Working with Sweden's official State Institute of Race-
Biology, Laughlin launched ancestral verifications of four immigrant candidates,
all young men, one from Kalmartan, one from Valhallavagen, and
two from Stockholm. The American consul was to provide a social worker
to undertake the field work along the lines of an earlier Laughlin study that
was being translated into Swedish.36

He was sure his work in Sweden would yield scientific proof that
Nordics were superior human beings. Writing from Europe, he expressed
his elation to Judge Harry Olson of Chicago. "It seems that the Swedish
stock has been selected for generations by a very hard set of national conditions-
severe climate, relatively poor soil. The strenuous struggle for existence
seems to have eliminated the weaklings .... Of course, the original
Nordic stock was sound, else it would have died out entirely ... [and] could
not have made a good stock." Indeed, LaugWin thought that Swedish emigrants
"must be considered her finest product in international commerce."37

His optimism faded as he traveled south. In Belgium, Laughlin contacted
the American consul in Brussels to initiate investigations of four applicants
whose visas had not yet been approved-two men and a woman from
Brabant, and a woman from Brussels. His fellow eugenic activist Dr. Albert
Govaerts, who had studied the previous year in Cold Spring Harbor, helped
Laughlin get organized and performed the physical examinations. The
Solvay Institute, with the consent ofVrije University, provided desk space.38

In Italy, he liaised with that country's Commissioner General of
Emigration who agreed to help prepare field studies of four Italians seeking
to emigrate to the U.S. Laughlin was convinced Italy had "an excess of
population" and that the Italian government was "desirous of finding an
outlet for their 'unemployed.'" With this in mind, he began investigating
the four Italians.39

In England, an office was set up for Laughlin in the Eugenics
Education Society headquarters outside London. Four Britons who had
applied to emigrate were selected for familial examination. They included
two Middlesex Jews (a teenage man named Morris and a woman in her
twenties), plus a young woman from Devonshire and a young man from
Hampshire. U.S. Public Health Service officers stationed in England were
to perform the medical examinations.4o

Laughlin reported back to Davenport that the various investigations
"were made by a field worker ... in much the same fashion as similar individual
and family histories are made by eugenical field workers in the
United States." The help of U.S. consuls was indispensable to "securing
the most intimate individual and family histories of would-be emigrants to
America ... awaiting visas." Indeed, the individuals themselves were actually
selected by the consuls, "who are giving their full cooperation in the
work," Laughlin added. He hoped consular officials would go further and
glean confidential family character information from local priests. If immigrant
candidates felt the questions were too intrusive or offensive,
Laughlin explained, field workers would "simply withdraw to the American
Consulate, and announce that if the would-be immigrant desires to have
his passport vised [issued a visa], he must provide the information concerning
his own 'case history' and 'family pedigree.'" Laughlin boasted that the
consuls would "smooth the way for perfecting these field studies."41

Mental tests to identify feeblemindedness were of course part of the
investigation, although Laughlin did not indicate what language was being
used in the various non-English-speaking countries. Where U.S. Public
Health staff was not available for medical examinations, Laughlin proposed
contract nurses or physicians. Secretaries and stenographers stationed
around the Continent would be employed to type up the results.42

The purpose of Laughlin's family probes was not to help the United
States properly ascertain the intellectual, economic, political or social caliber
of individual immigrants, which fell well within any government's prerogative,
but rather to determine how much tainted blood an applicant had
received from his forebears. Ancestral blood, not individual worth, would
be Laughlin's sole determinant.

He was receiving excellent cooperation until he arrived in Paris in late
November of 1923. There he set up a mailing account at the local American
Express office at 11 Rue Scribe, and was then ready to begin work. But
when he contacted American Consul General A. M. Thackera to begin his
local probes, the embassy balked. Someone at the embassy checked Regulation
124, dating back to 1896. It was against regulations for American
consuls to correspond with officials of other American departments.
Laughlin, as Special Immigration Agent to Europe, was officially a representative
of the Department of Labor. Obviously, the rule would not allow
them to collaborate with Laughlin.43

To resolve the problem, a conference was held in Paris on Sunday,
December 2,1923, attended not only by Consul General Thackera, but
also by his British counterpart, Consul General Robert Skinner, as well as
Consul General-at-Large Robert Frazer. They could find no way around
the regulations. So they cabled Washington for instructions. By the end of
the week, the State Department sent notice that the rule had been waived,
so long as the diplomats "confined themselves to facts and did not render
opinion or try to outline policy," as Laughlin reported it. The project proceeded
unimpeded, mainly because the consuls were eager to cooperate.44

Before he was done, Laughlin had visited twenty-five U.S. consular
offices in ten countries: Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Italy, Holland,
Germany, Switzerland, England, Spain and France, as well as the French
colony of Algiers. Not only did Laughlin proudly establish eugenic testing
procedures and precedents wherever he went, he created a network of
friendly American consuls throughout the Continent, a feat he bragged
about to the ERa. In fact, going beyond on-site work with the twenty-five
consulates, Laughlin also mass-mailed every American consulate in Europe
and the Near East-128 consulates in all-advising them of his project and
seeking detailed local demographic data. Within months, two consulates
had already provided partial reports directly to Laughlin, and more than
two dozen others had sent the requested information to the State
Department to be forwarded to Laughlin, who was still traveling. Eventually
eighty-seven consulates supplied the requested population and ethnic
information directly to Laughlin. Only eleven did not respond.45

During his whirlwind tour, Laughlin found little time for sightseeing.
Moreover, as he traveled from city to city and incurred mounting
expenses for stenographers, field investigators, report printing and other
general living expenses, he was advancing his own money. He was still
collecting a salary as ERa assistant director, but he complained more
than once, "I am bearing my own expense." He was uncertain ifhe would
ever be reimbursed. In late 1923, Laughlin petitioned Davenport, "If
these studies prove profitable, and I am permitted to continue them
beyond the first ofJanuary [1924], I respectfully request that provision be
made for my expenses."46

Assistant Secretary of Labor Henning had promised a $500 stipend, and
Laughlin had applied to receive it, but Henning's secretary then notified
Laughlin that the department had "no means of sending you cash in
advance .... " Laughlin confided to Davenport, "I am a little uneasy about
the 500 Dollars. The Department of Labor promised, but did not deliver."47

Carnegie and the ERO were not helpful, still apprehensive about
Laughlin's growing reputation for outlandish race science. Even the prestigious
scientific journal Nature had publicly castigated Laughlin in a review
of his 1922 study on eugenic sterilization. For Laughlin, the tension with
his own organization was palpable. To counter the bad reviews, he began
sending a disenchanted Merriam as many complimentary European
reviews of his work as he could. He also dispatched frequent optimistic
reports back home justifying his investment of time, but noted that, in
return, "I have not heard very many times from Cold Spring Harbor."48

At one point in late November of 1923, an almost desperate Laughlin
admitted that the British and Belgian family case studies had already
exhausted the anticipated $500 Labor Department reimbursement, and
"the Swedish and Italian studies will need additional funds." He asked for
financial assistance from the Carnegie Institution, and also mentioned this
request to Davenport, so formally as to almost be provocative. "I ... do not
feel like going into the matter any further without authorization for
expenses from the director of the Eugenics Record Office," Laughlin wrote
to Davenport, who was, of course, the director of the ERO. He added, "I
should also like the assurance that in case the Department of Labor does
not supply the money which I have actually spent for field assistance, I
should be reimbursed [by the ERO]."49

Finally, on December 21, the Carnegie Institution decided to be more
forthcoming with support for Laughlin's European endeavors. Davenport
dispatched a letter to Laughlin in Belgium assuring him that the
Department of Labor would reimburse all legitimate expenses. At the end
of the letter he casually appended exactly what he knew Laughlin most
wanted to hear: "Did I tell you that $300 has been appropriated for your
traveling expenses in the budget of this Department [at Carnegie], and a
check will be made out to you for it January first?"50

In mid-February of 1924, Laughlin sailed into New York Harbor after
an exhausting six-month eugenic mission to Europe. Now it was time for
the special immigration agent to compile his ideas and data into a scientific
report to Congress. His government allies were more than ready. Several
weeks before Laughlin sailed home, the seven-man ad hoc Committee on
Selective Immigration published a detailed endorsement of his conclusions
and proposed legislation, including overseas eugenic screening. Signing on
to that report was House Immigration Committee Chairman Johnson, acting
in his alter ego as member of the seven-man committee. The published
report noted that although Laughlin was still in Europe, they knew he
would agree with its contents.51

On February 17, 1924, just after Laughlin returned, Davis in his capacity
as secretary of labor also advocated Laughlin's ideas in a special editorial
in the New .York Times. Davis declared that the program suggested by
Laughlin must be enacted "so that America may not be a conglomeration
of racial groups ... but a homogenous race striving for the fulfillment of the
ideals upon which this Government was founded."52

On March 8, Laughlin again testified before Johnson's immigration
committee, this time presenting a massive table- and chart-bedecked
report bearing the charged title "Europe as An Emigrant-Exporting
Continent and the United States as an Immigrant-Receiving Nation." True
to form, Laughlin declared the existence of an "American Race." He
admitted that America was created by "a transplanted people," but that the
"nation was established by its founders. The pioneers 'got in on the ground
floor.'" As such, this new American race "is a race of white people."
Therefore, he summarized, the nation's racial character "is being modified
to some degree by the changed racial character of the immigration of the
last two generations."53

His voluminous charts and reports displayed samplings of the twelve
family pedigrees he had assembled in Europe, as well as abundant columns
of immigrant data and U.S. population trends. In exhibit after exhibit,
Laughlin piled racial ratio upon racial ratio and population percentage
upon population percentage, offering copious scientific reinforcement of
his conclusions. The majority of Johnson's committee expressed complete
support for both Laughlin and his research. At one point a congressman
asked Laughlin to respond to denunciations of his work. "I decline to get
into controversy with any heckler-critics," he retorted, "... I shall answer
criticisms by supplying more first-hand facts." Johnson piped in, "Don't
worry about criticism, Dr. Laughlin, you have developed a valuable
research and demonstrated a most startling state of affairs."54

Johnson's committee was also willing to lobby within other government
agencies in support of Laughlin's work. For example, when it became obvious
that the State Department itself was now balking at releasing the confidential
information that twenty-five consulates had submitted for
Laughlin, immigration committee members bristled. "I think we ought to
have a show-down on this," snapped one congressman.55

The issue was finally decided some weeks later in a private meeting. On
June 17, Carnegie president Merriam and Laughlin met at Washington's
elite Cosmos Club with Assistant Secretary of State Wilbur Carr, who
headed up the consular service. Carnegie officials correctly believed that
Carr had become "very favorably inclined toward cooperation with the
Institution in this matter." At their meeting, Merriam explained the ERO's
interest and Carr agreed to share the information, so long as Laughlin
abided by a working understanding. Inasmuch as Laughlin held multiple
government positions, any Carnegie Institution activities on the topic
inside the United States would continue under the purview of the
Department of Labor, the House Immigration Committee or any other
domestic agency. But any overseas activity would need both general State
Department approval and prior agreement by the ranking diplomat in the
foreign locale. As part of the arrangement, Laughlin also agreed that any
future demographic publications gleaned from consular data would be submitted
in advance to the State Department "to prevent any possible embarrassment
of the Federal Government."56

Two days later, with the arrangement sealed, Secretary of Labor Davis
delivered a formal, interdepartmental request directly to Secretary of State
Charles Evans Hughes asking that the confidential consular data be made
available to Laughlin. Laughlin was prepared to assemble a detailed, highly
personal, multifolder case study of immigrant candidates and their ancestry.
Folder D, section 2b, for example, catalogued the family's "moral qualities."
With the new information, Laughlin could offer vivid examples of
his new system of human "filtering."57

The State Department sought to "prevent any possible embarrassment
of the Federal Government" by Laughlin for the same reason the Carnegie
Institution and Merriam expressed jitters. By this time Laughlin was more
than a controversial pseudoscientist increasingly challenged by immigrant
groups and others; he was in some quarters a complete laughingstock. And
when Laughlin was excoriated in the popular press, all of eugenics and the
Carnegie Institution itself were also opened to ridicule.58

Perhaps no better example of the ridicule directed at Laughlin at the
time was a forty-seven-page lampoon written under the pseudonym Ezekiel
Cheever, who in reality was probably either the irreverent Baltimore Sun
commentator H. L. Mencken or one of his associates. Cheever's booklet, a
special edition of his School Issues, was billed on its cover as a "Special Extra
Eugenics Number" in which Cheever "wickedly squeals on Doctor Harry
H. Laughlin of the Carnegie Institution and other Members of the
Eugenics Committee of the United States of America for feeding scientifically
and biologically impure data to Honorable Members of the House of
Representatives concerning the Immigration Problem." In page after page
of satirical jabs, Laughlin's statistics were cited verbatim and then dismembered
for their preposterousness. 59

For example, Cheever deprecated Laughlin's reliance on IQ testing to
gauge feeblemindedness. "Undoubtedly, one of the greatest blunders made
by scientific men in America the past fifty years," he wrote, "was the premature
publication of the results of the Army [intelligence] tests." Mocking
Laughlin's scientific racism, Cheever titled one section "Nigger in the
Wood-Pile," which charged, "If the opinions advanced by Doctor Laughlin
and based upon this same unscientific rubbish, are as unreliable as they
appear when the rubbish is revealed in a true light, then it would seem that
the Carnegie Institution of Washington must either disclaim any part of
the job or confess that the job, despite Carnegie Institution's part is a rotten
one, provided Carnegie Institution does not wish to be regarded as on a par
with the Palmer Institute of Chiropractic. "60

Cheever scolded "Honorable AlbertJohnson, Chairman of the House's
Committee on Immigration and Naturalization and a member of the
Eugenics Committee, [who] announced at the hearings: 'I have examined
Doctor Laughlin's data and charts and find that they are both biologically
and statistically thorough, and apparently sound.' It is now in order for
Congress to examine Honorable Albert Johnson and ascertain if as much
can be said about him."61

In a section titled "Naughty Germ Plasms," referring to Laughlin's
race-based state institution surveys, Cheever jeered, "If the reader will
examine the schedules sent out to cooperating institutions he will get a new
and somewhat startling view as to what constitutes 'the more serious crimes
or felonies.' Under adult types of crime there were listed: Drunkenness,
Conducting business under an assumed name, Peddling without license,
Begging, and Reckless driving. Among the serious crimes or felonies of the
juvenile type he will find: Trespass, Unlawful use of automobiles, Begging,
Truancy, Running away, Being a stubborn and disobedient child. If Doctor
Laughlin can devise a means for locating germ plasms that are responsible
for such heinous crimes, his fame will overshadow that of Pasteur."62

Often, the booklet used Laughlin's own words against him. Cheever
quoted from one passage in Laughlin's testimony that confessed, "At the
beginning of this investigation there were in existence no careful or
extended studies of this particular subject; the figures that were generally
given were either guesswork or based upon very small samples of the
popula tion. "63

"Either Doctor Laughlin is exceedingly stupid," scorned Cheever, "or
else he is merely a statistical legerdemain [sleight of hand artist]."64

Extracts from Cheever's booklet were syndicated in the Baltimore Sun.
Other attacks followed. One severe assessment of his work by a reviewer
named Jennings, writing in Science Magazine, caused eugenic circles particular
distress because it appeared in a scholarly publication. "Can't you get
out some sort of reply to Jennings," immigration guru Robert DeCourcy
Ward wrote Laughlin. "He has been making a lot of trouble about your
Melting Pot Report .... I hate to have that man talk and write without getting
any real come-back from you." Impervious as always, Laughlin
shrugged off Jennings, and also dismissed Cheever as "more of a political
attack trying to answer scientific data."65

Davenport had no choice but to also deflect complaints arising from the
steady stream of critical articles. Not a few of these were sent directly to the
Carnegie Institution. Writing on Carnegie Institution letterhead,
Davenport defensively replied to one man who had read Cheever's pieces
in the Baltimore Sun, asserting that Laughlin had been unduly libeled.
Indeed, Davenport's rebuttal likened the Cheever articles to the ridicule
launched against Davenport himself years earlier by Galtonian eugenicists
in England. He closed by saying that Cheever was so "out for blood" that
he should be imprisoned.66

But no amount of public rebuke would dissuade Johnson, and that was
all Laughlin cared about. Johnson continued to publish Laughlin's testimony
as though it were solid scientific truth. Using Laughlin's biological
data as a rationale, he pressed for new immigration quotas keyed to the
national ancestral makeup reflected in the 1890 census. During April and
May of 1924, the House and Senate passed the Immigration Act of 1924,
and President Calvin Coolidge signed the sweeping measure into law on
May 26. This legislation would radically reduce non-Nordic immigration,
since the representation of Eastern and Southern Europeans was radically
less in 1890 than it had been in 1910. The Italian quota, for example, would
be slashed from 42,000 per year to just 4,000. Many called the new legislation
the "National Origins Act" because it limited new immigration to a
quota of just 2 percent of the "national origins" present in America according
to the 1890 census.67

But tempestuous debate still surrounded the statistical validity of the
1890 census, and no one knew how reliable its reporting had been.
Statisticians quarreled over just who was Irish or German or Italian, and/or
whose name sounded sufficiently Irish or German or Italian to be counted as
such. Quotas could not be established until the disputed 1890 percentages
were settled. So the 1924 law charged the Census Bureau with the duty of
studying the numbers and reporting their conclusions to a so-called "Quota
Board," which would be comprised of the three relevant cabinet secretaries:
Davis of Labor, Herbert Hoover of Commerce, and Frank Kellogg of State.
Quotas were to be announced by the president himself in 192 7.68

Eugenicists tried mightily to influence the Quota Board's deliberations.
Just how the quotas were set would dictate the success or failure of this latest
eugenic legislative crusade. A common rallying cry was expressed in
A. p. Schultz's raceological tome, Race or Mongrel, which proclaimed, "The
principle that 'all men are created equal' is still considered the chief pillar
of strength of the United States .... Only one objection can be raised
against it, that it does not contain one iota of truth."69

Constant permutations and reevaluations of the demographic data were
bandied back and forth throughout 1926. Politically-spun rhetoric masked
true feelings. One senator, for example, staunchly announced he would not
permit the new quotas to discriminate against Jews, Italians or Poles, but he
concluded with the traditional eugenic view that any quota system must
stop discriminating against Northwestern Europeans, that is, Nordics. As
ethnic groups ramped up their pressure, however, some of the most stalwart
quota crusaders began to falterJo

In the second half of 1926, the quota champion himself, Albert
Johnson, came up for reelection. By now the immigrants in his district had
come together in opposition to further restrictions. He began to equivocate.
In August of 1926, Johnson gave a campaign speech opposing the
"national origins" provisions because too many foreign elements would
vote for repeal anyway. At one point he publicly declared in a conciliatory
tone, "If the national origins amendment ... is going to breed bad feeling in
the United States ... and result in friction at home, you may rest assured it
will not be put into effect." He added that his own "inside information" was
that the quotas would never be institutedJ' Disheartened eugenicists sadly
concluded that Johnson and his allies had completely succumbed to the
influence of foreign groups.

Johnson's inside information proved somewhat prophetic. On January
3, 1927, Secretaries Davis, Hoover and Kellogg delivered to President
Coolidge country-by-country quota recommendations, accompanied by a
carefully crafted cover letter declaring that they could come to no reliable
consensus about the true percentages of national origins in 1890. "It may
be stated," the joint letter cautioned, "that the statistical and historical
information available from which these computations were made is not
entirely satisfactory." On January 6, Congress requested the official letter
and its recommendations. The White House delivered them the next day.
Eugenicists assumed that although there was room for argument, some
form of quotas would be enacted at once.72

But before the sun set that day, the White House delivered a replacement
cover letter to the Senate. This one was similar, bearing the same
January 3 date, again addressed to President Calvin Coolidge and again
signed by all three cabinet secretaries. But the key phrase warned the
President more forcefully: "Although this is the best information we have
been able to secure, we wish to call attention to the reservations made by
the committee and to state that, in our opinion, the statistical and historical
information available raises grave doubts as to the whole value of these
computations as a basis for the purposes intended. We therefore cannot
assume responsibility for such conclusions under these circumstances."73

In other words, within hours the demographic information went from
merely problematic to absolutely worthless. Quotas could not be reliably
ordained under the circumstances. On the last day of the 1927 session,
Congress passed Senate Joint Resolution 152 postponing implementation
of the new quotas for one year. House debate on the question ran less than
thirty minutes. A year later, in 1928, quotas were once more postponed,
again after a protracted statistical and political standoff replete with
Congressional letter-writing campaigns and fractious newspaper editorials.
Eugenicists were outraged and saw it as a triumph by organized foreign
elements.74

Even before the first postponement, Laughlin began investigating the
heritage of the individual senators themselves. "We are working on the racial
origin study of present senators," Laughlin reported to a eugenic immigration
activist, "and will line the study up with the data which you sent on members
of the [original] Constitutional Convention. It will make an exceedingly
interesting comparison," he added, "showing the drift of composition in the
racial make-up of the American people, or at least of their leaders."75

Finally, in 1929, after indecisive demographic scuffles between census
scholars and eugenic activists trying to preserve Nordic preference, compromise
quotas were agreed upon by scholars formally and informally
advising Congress and the president. Admitting that the numbers were
"tainted" and "far from final," binding quotas were nonetheless created.
The new president, Herbert Hoover, promulgated the radical reductions
based on the accepted analysis of the 1890 census. Even those quotas did not
last long. Two years later they succumbed to redistricting pressures, political
concerns and the momentum of the coming 1930 census. Finally, the
quotas were revised based on national percentages from the 1920 census.?6

Laughlin's quest for an overseas network of eugenic investigators
achieved only brief success. The system was installed in Belgium, Great
Britain, the Irish Free State, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany,
Czechoslovakia, Italy, Holland and Poland, and for a time the system
eugenically inspected some 80 percent of the would-be emigrants from
those countries. On average, 88 of every 1,000 applicants were found to be
mentally or physically defective. Laughlin aimed to have one eugenicist
stationed in each capital. But overseas examination was short-lived for lack
of the extraordinary funding and complicated bilateral agreements
required. Moreover, too many foreign governments ultimately objected to
such examinations of their citizens.?7 Long after the examinations ceased,
however, America's consuls remained eugenically aware of future immigrants
and refugees as never before. Their biological preferences and prejudices
would become insurmountable barriers to many fleeing oppression
in the world of the 1930s.

Quotas and the ational Origins Act ruled immigration until 1952.
Only the 1952 McCarran-Walter Immigration and Naturalization Act
amended almost a century of racial and eugenic American law to finally
declare: "The right of a person to become a naturalized citizen ... shall not
be denied or abridged because of race or sex or because such person is
married."78

American eugenics felt it had secured far less than half a loaf. For this
reason, it was important that inferior blood be wiped away worldwide by
analogous groups in other countries. An international movement would
soon emerge. During the twenties, the well-funded eugenics of Laughlin,
Davenport and so many other American raceologists would spawn, nurture
and inspire like-minded individuals and organizations across Europe.

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