CHAPTER 12: Eugenic Imperialism

American eugenicists saw mankind as a biological cesspool.

After purifying America from within, and preventing defective strains
trom reaching U.S. shores, they planned to eliminate undesirables trom the
rest of the planet. In 1911, the Eugenics Section of the American Breeders
Association, in conjunction with the Carnegie Institution, began work
upon its Report of the Committee to Study and to Report on the Best Practical
Means for Cutting Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the Human Population.
The last of eighteen points was entitled "International Co-operation." Its
intent was unmistakable: the ERO would undertake studies "looking
toward the possible application of the sterilization of defectives in foreign
countries, together with records of any such operations .... " The American
eugenics movement intended to turn its sights on "the extent and nature of
the problem of the socially inadequate in foreign countries."l This would
be accomplished by incessant international congresses, federations and scientific
exchanges.

Global eugenics began in 1912 with the First International Congress of
Eugenics in London. At that conference, the dominant American contingent
presented its report on eliminating all social inadequates worldwide.
Their blueprint for world eugenic action was overwhelmingly accepted, so
much so that after the congress the Carnegie Institution published the
study as a special two-part bulletin.2

International cooperation soon began to coalesce. That first congress
welcomed delegations from many countries, but five in particular sent
major consultative committees: the United States, Germany, Belgium, Italy
and France. During the congress, these few leaders constituted themselves
as a so-called International Eugenics Committee. This new body first met
a year later. On August 4, 1913, prominent eugenic leaders from the
United States, England, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and
Norway converged on Paris. This new international eugenics oversight
committee would function under various names and in various member
configurations as the supreme international eugenics agency, deciding
when and where congresses would be held, which national committees and
institutions would be recognized, and which eugenic policies would be pursued.
The dozen or so men scheduled a second planning session for one
year later, August 15, 1914, in Belgium. They also scheduled the Second
International Congress of Eugenics, which would be open to delegates
from all nations and held two years later, in 1915, in New York.3

But in August of 1914, Germany invaded Belgium.

A continent-wide war ignited before Europe's eyes. The Belgian planning
session was cancelled, and the Second International Congress of
Eugenics was postponed. While Europe fought, and indeed even after the
United States entered the war, America continued its domestic eugenic
program and held its place as the world leader in eugenic research, theory
and activism.4

When the war ended four years later, international eugenics reorganized,
with America retaining its leadership. The Second International
Congress of Eugenics was rescheduled for September 1921, still in New
York, under the auspices of the Washington-based National Research
Council, the administrative arm of America's prestigious, Congressionallychartered
National Academy of Sciences. The National Academy of
Sciences functioned as a way of uniting America's disparate scientific establishments.
As it had for the first congress, the State Department mailed the
invitations around the world. Although the ational Research Council was
the official authorizing body, Davenport wrote his colleagues that it was
"up to the ew York group to put this Congress through."5

The "New York group" was led by Laughlin, Mrs. Harriman and
Madison Grant, author of The Passing of the Great Race. In addition to being
among the world's leading raceologists, Grant was a trustee for the
American Museum of Natural History. The museum became the titular
sponsor of the second congress. The museum's premises were used for the
congress's meetings and exhibits, its staff helped with the details, and its
president, Henry Osborn, a eugenicist himself, was named president of the
international gathering. The museum's name was prominently displayed
on the published proceedings, as though the congress were just another
museum function.6 All of this imbued the event with a distinctly evolutionary
and anthropological quality. This was exactly the intent of congress
organizers. They wanted the event to be seen as a milestone in the natural
history of the human species.

The second congress was rich with typical raceological dogma and
dominated by American biological precepts. Alexander Graham Bell
assumed the honorary presidency. The proceedings were divided into four
sections: comparative heredity, the human family, racial differences and
"Eugenics and the State." Delegates from every continent attended to
share eugenic principles and to form legislative game plans they could take
back home. Osborn's opening address represented a challenge from
America. "In certain parts of Europe," he set forth, "the worst elements of
society have gained the ascendancy and threaten the destruction of the
best." He recognized that "To each of the countries of the world, racial betterment
presents a different aspect .... Let each ... consider its own problems
.... " But in the final analysis it came down to one mandate: "As
science has enlightened government in the prevention and spread of disease,
it must also enlighten government in the prevention of the spread and
multiplication of worthless members of society .... "7

Osborn also repeated the standard eugenic idea: "The true spirit of
American democracy that all men are born with equal rights and duties has
been confused with the political sophistry that all men are born with equal
character and ability to govern themselves .... "8

Not only was the rhetoric American, but so was the science. Out of
fifty-three scientific papers, all but twelve were produced by American
eugenicists on American issues, all conforming to the Carnegie Institution's
sociopolitical strategies. Topics included Indiana's Tribe of Ishmael,
Kentucky's mountain people and Lucien Howe's proposals on hereditary
blindness.9

Some European eugenicists complained about America's domination of
the global congress. Sweden's Hermann Lundborg, for example, railed to
Davenport in a rambling handwritten missive that America was trying to
hijack the worldwide movement. "I have been hoodwinked .... By what
right do you in America usurp the words Second International, when the
Congress is not international. It is an injustice which not only I, but I
believe the majority of my [Swedish] section do not approve of."lo

Such protests did not deter Davenport and his colleagues. Indeed, in a
special presentation on the essence of eugenic research, Davenport
explained his dedication. "Why do we investigate?" he asked. "Alas! We
have now too little precise knowledge in any field of eugenics. We can
command respect for our eugenic conclusions only as our findings are
based on rigid proof .... " Davenport reminded the delegates that wealthy
American benl'fact"rs had made the critical difference between mere ideas
and hard data. "It is largely due to the extraordinary vision of Mrs. E. H.
Harriman, the founder of the Eugenics Record Office, that in this country,
eugenics is more a subject of research than [mere] propaganda."! 1

Money made the difference for the international convention as well.
Mrs. Harriman donated an extra $2,500 to fund the more than 120 exhibits
erected throughout the museum. These included a prominent exhibit on
sterilization statutes in the United States. The Carnegie Institution
extended a special grant of $2,000 to defray travel expenses for several of
the key European speakers, and to cover general expenses for the delegates.
Other wealthy eugenicists contributed significant sums and were named
patrons of the gathering. They included sanitarium owner John Kellogg,
working through his Race Betterment Foundation, and YMCA benefactor
and prominent political contributor Cleveland H. Dodge.12

In recalling the congress some weeks later for the Indiana Academy of
Science, Carnegie researcher Arthur Estabrook quoted Osborn: "That all
men are born with equal rights and duties has been confused with the political
sophistry that all men are born with equal character and ability to govern
themselves .... "13

During the congress Davenport orchestrated the renaming and broadening
of the International Eugenics Committee into a Permanent
International Commission on Eugenics. This renamed entity would sanction
all eugenic organizations in "cooperating" member countries, which
now included Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Great Britain,
Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Argentina, Brazil, Canada,
Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, Australia, New Zealand and the
United States. Germany was not included because it refused to sit on the
same panel with its World War I enemies Belgium and France. Germany
was also struggling under the punitive terms of the Treaty of Versailles,
which made international eugenic cooperation difficult. 14

Multinational eugenics gathered momentum during the next two years.
In October of 1922, the Permanent International Commission assembled
in Brussels. The meeting was once again steered by Davenport and his circle.
Representatives from Belgium, Denmark, Great Britain, France, the
Netherlands and Norway began coordinating their efforts. The commission
resolved to learn more about eugenic campaigns in India and Japan,
and also voted unanimously to invite Germany back into its ranks. IS

In September of 1923, Laughlin kicked off his first European immigration
tour by attending the Permanent International Commission meeting
in Lund, Sweden. Preparations for this meeting prevented Laughlin from
sailing to Europe in July with Secretary of Labor James Davis. At the
Lund meeting, Laughlin advanced most of the motions that the commission
adopted. 16

The 1923 meeting proved a watershed event for the movement. The
group ratified the four-point "Ultimate Program" devised by the American
Eugenics Society, calling for each nation to undertake research, education,
administrative measures and "conservative legislation" within its borders.
And although it welcomed news of their efforts, the commission stopped
short of extending membership to Japan and India.17

To keep the eugenic directorate truly elite, commission rules permitted
no more than three representatives of each cooperating country to be
empanelled. Davenport and Laughlin sat at the apex of this group. All commission
members were dedicated to the American-espoused belief in
Nordic supremacy, a sentiment which was also growing in Germany. Yet
Germany was still not a full participant on the commission. Although
Germany was willing to rejoin the group, German race scientists told commissioners
that Germany still "could not cooperate with representatives of
certain nations." In personal correspondence, German eugenicists specified
whom they meant: the French. 18 Commission leaders said they would wait.

During the next two years, with Germany still in the periphery,
Davenport and Laughlin were able to extend U.S. domination of the commission's
scope, science, and political agenda. Resolutions were binding on
the dozen or so members, committing them to pursue the agreed-upon legislative
and scientific strategies. Because of this, policy developed on Long
Island leapt across the ocean directly into the capitals of other nations. 19

For example, in 192 5 Davenport introduced a resolution based on
Laughlin's strategy of investigating immigrant families and screening them
for eugenical fitness. Likening human beings to farm animals, Davenport's
resolution read: "Whereas every nation has a right to select those who shall
be included in its body politic, and whereas some knowledge of both family
history and past personal performance are as essential a part of the information
about a human immigrant and potential parent, as about an
imported horse or cow, therefore [be it] resolved that each immigrantreceiving
country may properly enquire into the family and personal history
of each immigrant."2o Commission members, working through
scientific and intellectual societies back home, then pressured for changes
in immigration regulations along these lines.

Worldwide uniformity was important to Davenport. To push usage of
the ERO's standard family pedigree form in all countries, Davenport issued
a message: "Members are reminded that a standardized form of pedigree
was worked out by the Federation and has been widely published in most
countries." He also asked all cooperating national societies to lobby for
national registration and census schemes similar to models already developed
by his colleagues in Norway and Holland. Davenport tempered his
worldwide eugenic mandates by assuring he would "avoid anything which
might savour of interference in national affairs," adding, "nevertheless, it is
clear that in certain directions, such work might be usefully undertaken."21

By 192 5, the commission was comprised not just of individuals, but also
of constituent eugenic societies and institutions. Hence it was time to
adopt another new name, the International Federation of Eugenic Organizations
(IFEO). The new name was meant to further extend the organization's
scope, and also reflected Davenport and Laughlin's desire to energize
and standardize the movements in many countries. Ultimately, uniformity
of eugenic action was written into IFEO membership rules. As president of
the IFEO, Davenport issued a memorandum to member societies restating
the federation's goals: "To endeavor to secure some measure of uniformity
in the methods of research, and also sufficient uniformity in the form of
presentation of results to make international work of worldwide use. To
endeavor to promote measures tending to eugenic progress, whether international
or national, on comparable lines."22

Even though Davenport was an influential steering force, federation
members were independent thinkers. They advanced their own substantial
legislative and scientific contributions for consideration by the federation.
The Nordic countries of Scandinavia were especially active in this regard.
Indeed, Europe's northwestern nations were the most receptive to eugenics.
Predominantly Catholic countries were the most resistant. Whether
resistant or receptive, however, each country's eugenics movement developed
its own literature in its own language, its own racial and genetic societies,
its own raceological personalities and its own homegrown agenda.
Nonetheless, the movement's fundamental principles were American and
shepherded by Americans. Many foreign eugenicists traveled to America
for training at Cold Spring Harbor and to attend meetings, congresses and
conferences. As the epicenter of eugenics, and by virtue of its domination
of the IFEO, American eugenic imperialism was able to take root throughout
Europe and indeed the world.23

Belgium's Societe BeIge d'Eugenique was organized in 1919. The
Belgian Eugenics Society announced in Eugenical Ne'"t1JSthat it was "fully
awake to the needs of the time in connection with preservation of the race.
Its leaders realize that the safeguarding of public health through hygienic
measures is not sufficient, but that due attention must be paid to the prevention
of the transmission of hereditary traits that would be injurious to
the race." The new society's nine sections included ones for social hygiene,
documentation and legislation. Within two years, the Belgian Eugenics
Society launched its own journal, which the ERO at Cold Spring Harbor
quickly declared to be of "high order."24

Dr. AJbert Govaerts led the Belgian movement. He was allied with
Laughlin from the beginning. Mter the second international congress in
New York in 1921, Govaerts stayed on and traveled to Cold Spring Harbor
for a term of study, which was funded by a fellowship from America's postwar
Commission for Relief in Belgium Educational Foundation.25

Govaerts's work at the ERO concentrated on hereditary tuberculosis
studies, and his research was published in the American Review ofIitberculosis
in 1922. After Govaerts returned to Belgium, his original tables and
calculations remained on file at the ERO. By early 1922, Govaerts's Belgian
Eugenics Society had installed eugenic lectures and courses at the
University of Brussels. They also succeeded in garnering recognition of the
budding science from the Belgian government. Later in 1922, a government-
supported National Office of Eugenics opened in Brussels at the distinguished
Solvay Institute. The National Office of Eugenics trained
eugenic field workers and operated as a Belgian version of the ERO.26

Laughlin and Govaerts often worked as a team. Laughlin used
Govaerts's office as a headquarters during his 1923 sojourn throughout
Europe as a Congressional immigration agent, and he even stayed in his
home when visiting Brussels. Eugenicists never secured sterilization laws in
Belgium, but Govaerts boasted of his lobbying efforts for a "eugenical
prenuptial examination" to be required of all marriage applicants. Eugenical
News reported that Govaerts "very graciously states that Belgian eugenicists
are deeply indebted to the Eugenics Record Office for the service rendered
in aiding the Belgian society to establish its new office."27

In Canada, eugenic passions became inflamed over many issues, including
the birth rate of French Canadians. But perhaps no debate was more
heated than the one prompted by problems associated with immigrant
groups. Hard-working Asian and European immigrants flowed into
Canada throughout the 1890s as the country's infrastructure expanded. In
1905, Ontario carried out its first census of the feebleminded. Shortly after
Indiana passed its 1907 sterilization law, Ontario's Provincial Inspector of
Hospitals and Public Charities argued that Rentoul's concepts could end
the hereditary production of tramps, prostitutes and other immoral characters.
Another Canadian physician pointed to the example of a Chicago doctor
who advocated asexualization.28

By 1910, Canada's British-American Medical Association was studying
the sterilization laws in California and Indiana. Similar legislation proposed
in Ontario and Manitoba did not succeed. But the movement for
human breeding and sterilization of the unfit continued. The first
Canadian sterilization law was passed by Alberta's legislature in 1928.
Alberta's Sexual Sterilization Act targeted mental defectives who "risk ...
multiplication of [their] evil by transmission of [their] disability to progeny."
Alberta's Eugenics Board authorized the sterilization of four hundred
people in its first nine years. In 1937, certain safeguards were eliminated by
the new Social Credit government, and the door was opened to forced sterilization.
Until the law was repealed in 1972, of some 4,700 applications,
2,822 surgeries were actually authorized. The majority of Alberta's sterilized
were young women under the age of twenty-five, many under the age
of sixteen. Following the example of America's hunt for mongrels, Alberta
disproportionately sterilized French-Canadian Catholics, Indians and
Metis (individuals of mixed French-Canadian and Indian descent). Indians
and Metis constituted just 2.5 percent of Canada's population, but in later
years represented 25 percent of Alberta's sterilized.29

British Columbia passed its own law in 1933, creating a three-person
Eugenics Board comprised of a judge, a psychiatrist and a social worker.
Because records were lost or destroyed, no one will ever know exactly how
many were sterilized in British Columbia, although one study discussed the
fates of over fifty women who had undergone the operation. 3D

In Switzerland, the eminent psychiatrist and sexologist Dr. Auguste
Forel was a leading disciple of eugenics beginning in 1910. He was also a
proponent of U.S.-style sterilization laws. The wealthy industrialist Julius
Klaus was another early advocate, endorsing eugenic registers to identify
Switzerland's unfit. When he died in 1920, Klaus bequeathed more than a
million Swiss francs, or about $4.4 million in modern money, to establish a
fund for Swiss eugenic investigations and related advocacy. Klaus's will
specifically forbade using the fund for charitable works to "ameliorate the
condition of physical and mental defectives."31

Swiss eugenic scientists were suddenly endowed. The anthropologist
Otto Schlaginhaufen became director of the Zurich-based Julius Klaus
Foundation for Heredity Research, Social Anthropology and Racial
Hygiene as well as the Institution for Race Biology. These organizations
were dedicated to "the promotion of all scientifically based efforts, whose
ultimate goal is ... to improve the white race." In 1923, Schlaginhaufen and
Forel, now fully funded, ascended to the Permanent International Eugenics
Commission.32

Swiss eugenics focused on the exclusion of certain ethnic groups, as
well as Forel's notion of sexology, that is, the study of sexual behavior, especially
as it related to women. Forel believed women wished to be and
should be "conquered, mastered and subjugated" to fulfill their national
reproductive duty. In 1928, Switzerland's first sterilization law was passed
in Canton Vaud, where Forel practiced. It targeted a vaguely-defined
"unfit." Only Vaud passed such a law, but physicians across the country
performed sterilizations for both medical and eugenical reasons. Although
the extent of Swiss sterilizations remains unknown, one scholar ascertained
that some 90 percent of the operations were conducted on women.33

In Denmark, eugenics was organized by two of Davenport's earliest
confederates, August Wimmer and Soren Hansen. Wimmer was a psychiatrist
at the University of Copenhagen, and Hansen was president of the
Danish Anthropological Committee. As Nordic raceologists seeking to
stamp out defective strains within an already eugenically elite country, their
affiliation with Davenport was natural. One Danish physician even traveled
to the Vineland Training School in New Jersey to study under H. H.
Goddard, whose texts on the Kallikaks and revision of the Binet-Simon test
became standard in Danish eugenical publications. Although resistant at
first, in 1912 the government launched a massive eugenical registration of
deaf-mutes, the feebleminded and other defectives. It was not until a
decade later that the first eugenic marriage restriction law was adopted. Socalled
"therapeutic sterilization" was common, but compulsory sterilization
would not be legalized until 1929.34

A government commission reexamined the sterilization issue in 1926,
looking to America for guidance. In November of 1927, Laughlin arranged
for his lengthy legislative guide on sterilization to be sent by Chicago judge
Harry Olson directly to a member of the Danish sterilization commission.
In 1929, Hansen proudly reported to Eugenical News that his country had
finally adopted what he termed, "the first 'modern' eugenical sterilization
law to be enacted in Europe."35

Shortly after the passage of Denmark's legislation, the Rockefeller
Foundation began supporting eugenic research in that country. Denmark's
leading eugenic scientist, Dr. Tage Kemp, received much of the financial
support. The first grants were awarded in 1930 for blood group research.
The next year Kemp received a special Rockefeller fellowship to continue
his research. In 1932, Kemp traveled to Cold Spring Harbor for further
study. He wanted eugenic and genetic research to achieve greater scientific
and medical exactitude. "I was notably impressed by the importance of
the careful execution of the several observations," he wrote Rockefeller
officials, adding, "these ought as far as possible to be carried out and reexamined
(after-examined) by an investigator with medical education."
Rockefeller officials agreed, granting Kemp a second fellowship in 1934.
They would continue to fund race biology and human genetics in
Denmark throughout the 1930s.36

Kemp was among the new breed of eugenic geneticists the Rockefeller
Foundation was cultivating to lift eugenics out of mere racial rhetoric and
into the realm of unemotional science. A Rockefeller report explained their
confidence in Kemp. "Race biology today suffers immensely from its mixture
with political dogmas and drives. Dr. Kemp, through his personality
and training, is as free from these as possible."37

In Norway, the raceologist Jon Alfred Mj0en endorsed American
eugenics from the outset. He propounded his theories from a wellequipped
animal and human measurement lab as well as a grand personal
library, crammed floor to ceiling with books and files. At the second congress
in New York, Mj0en suggested the resolution that ultimately led to
the formation of the American Eugenics Society. In his opening address to
the convention, Osborn singled out Mj0en and Lundborg. "It is largely
through the active efforts of leaders like Mj0en and Lundborg," he
acknowledged, "that there is a new appreciation of the spiritual, moral and
physical value of the Nordic race."38

Davenport toured eugenic facilities in Norway, and Mj0en visited New
York on several occasions. Mj0en was also a frequent contributor to, and
topic of, Eugenical News. The dapper Norwegian was often pictured armin-
arm with leading American eugenicists, such as Leon Whitney. Norway
passed its sterilization law in 1934, and in 1977 amended it to become a
mostly voluntary measure. Some 41,000 operations were performed, about
75 percent of them on women. 39

The Swedish government's State Institute of Race-Biology opened its
doors in 1922. It was an entire school dedicated to eugenic thought, and it
would leave a multilayered movement in its wake. Sweden alternately
shared and coordinated its programs with the IFEO. Sweden's first sterilization
law was passed in 1934. It began by sterilizing those who had "mental
illness, feeble-mindedness, or other mental defects" and eventually
widened its scope to include those with "an anti-social way of life." Eventually,
some 63,000 government-approved sterilizations were undertaken
on a range of "unfit" individuals, mainly women. In some years women
represented a mere 63 percent of those sterilized, but in most years the percentage
who were women exceeded 90 percent.40

American influence rolled across the Continent. Finland, Hungary,
France, Romania, Italy and other European nations developed Americanstyle
eugenic movements that echoed the agenda and methodology of the
font at Cold Spring Harbor. Soon the European movements learned to
cloak their work in more medically and scientifically refined approaches,
and many were eventually funded by such philanthropic sponsors as the
Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Institution. In the late twenties
and thirties, these foundations liberally granted money to studies that
adhered to a more polished clinical regimen.41

Throughout the twenties and thirties, America's views were celebrated
at the numerous international gatherings held in America, such as the
Third International Congress of Eugenics, which in 1932 was hosted once
again at New York City's American Museum of Natural History. Theory
became doctrine when proliferated in the many eugenic newsletters, books,
and journal articles published by the American movement. America's most
venerable universities and academic authorities also reinforced the view
that eugenic science was legitimate.42

Some nations, such as France and Italy, rejected their native eugenic
movements. Some, such as Holland, only enacted broadly-based registration
laws. Some, such as Lithuania and Brazil, enacted eugenic marriage
laws. Some, such as Finland, went as far as forced sterilization.43

One nation, Germany, would go further than anyone could imagine.

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