Eugenic Nation

by Stern, Alexandra Minna

  Through the ISC, the Eugenics Section of the CCC, regular monthly checks to immigration restriction leagues, and a heavy volume of letter writing, by the 1920s Goethe had situated himself as a magnet in American eugenics. He was a member of key organizations and corresponded with Jordan, whom he had first met aboard a train in Japan in 1911, Davenport, Terman, Holmes, Laughlin, Paul Popenoe, Ezra Gosney, and Ellsworth Huntington, among others.159 His commitment to eugenics deepened over the ensuing years. In addition to belonging to the AES and the Human Betterment Foundation and sitting on the board of the American Institute of Family Relations, in 1935 and 1936 Goethe acted as president of the Eugenics Research Association, which was affiliated with the ERO.160 In his 1936 presidential address, Goethe praised America’s immigration and sterilization laws, likening them to related legislation in Germany, whose sterilization program seemed to him to be “administered wisely, and without racial cruelty.”161 The subsequent year, Goethe expounded on one of the themes highlighted in his eugenic pamphlets, the extinction of the Inca high castes, forewarning against such an agonizing imperial collapse in the United States. To avoid a “similar, even though longer-drawn out destruction of our high-powered,” he espoused tighter immigration control, especially along the southern border, and applauded the Nordic nations who were sterilizing the “markedly social inadequate, such as those insane, blind, criminal by inheritance.”162

  Despite the existence of dynamic eugenics groups in California in the 1930s, Goethe was not satisfied with the fight against “biological illiteracy” in Sacramento and environs. Thus, in 1933, he and Eugene H. Pitts, a Sacramento physician who was also a member of the Eugenics Research Association, cofounded the ESNC, with the stated goal of fomenting “positive” eugenics.163 Although Pitts served as president and delivered radio lectures on behalf of the society during its formative stage, by the 1940s the ESNC had become wholly Goethe’s pet project and was headquartered at his office in the Capital National Bank building.164 For approximately twenty years, the ESNC broadcasted its existence through the dissemination of nearly one hundred imaginative, disturbing, and bizarre pamphlets, almost all of which were written by Goethe and expressed his unique eugenic vision. In these pocket-size booklets, Goethe merged mystical stories of superior species, such as the egret—the ESNC’s mascot and symbol of the “near-extinct’s comeback”—with clamors for population and family planning, tirades against ethnic and racial groups, and exalted tales of magnificent and robust ancient civilizations.165 Goethe estimated that he spent close to one million dollars producing and distributing his pamphlets, which he was proud to send, along with hundreds of books and journals, to individuals and libraries across the country.166 In an oral history interview conducted two months before his death, Goethe stated that one of the reasons for so many pamphlets was to ensure a continuous supply for librarians, linchpins in the quest to “reduce biological illiteracy.”167

  Nature conservation, immigration restriction, and better breeding continued to dominate Goethe’s agenda in the postwar era, and after Mimi’s unexpected death he threw himself deeply into writing, churning out six books between 1946 and 1955.168 In the positively reviewed War Profits and Better Babies, Goethe linked his fascination with urban planning and fertility to a glowing endorsement of the Ungemach Gardens in Strasburg, France.169 This eugenic family experiment was designed in the 1920s, financed with profits the French had garnered during World War II, and consisted of 120 houses available only to “young married couples in good health, desiring to have children and raise them under favorable conditions of hygiene and morality.”170 Two year later, Goethe published Geogardening, a tract with ninety-one vignettes about the nurturing of plants ranging from narcissus to oleander to fuchsias, aimed at raising public awareness of the linkages between nature and eugenics.171 In addition to his pamphlets and books, Goethe wrote dozens of letters each month to librarians, educators, conservationists, biologists, and legislators. In the 1950s, for example, he wrote to select congressmen urging that the Walter-McCarran and subsequent immigration acts retain national origins quotas. He received replies from senators including Robert F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Barry Goldwater, and Strom Thurmond, who told Goethe that he appreciated his comments and concurred with his opinion: “I am also opposed to the opening up our immigration flood gates.”172

  Starting in the late 1940s, Goethe, often in remembrance of his “sweetheart” and their companionship (which he regularly referred to as “we-two” and “us-two”), turned his attention to memorial redwood groves, vowing to bankroll several through the Save-the-Redwoods League in the coming years and in his will.173 Most important, he envisioned and paid for the Mary Glide Goethe Grove and the Jedediah Smith Grove.174 The former had originally been commissioned for Mary’s mother and nephew, but after his beloved was gone Charles opted to dedicate it solely to her.175 In 1952, it was situated in a 160-acre plot in the Prairie Creek Redwoods.176 The Jedediah Smith grove, located in Mill Creek State Redwoods Park in Del Norte County, represented Goethe’s love of California history, place-naming, and nature parables. According to Goethe, while on a hiking expedition that passed by the Smith River (named for Jedediah in 1851), he and Mimi became intrigued with the mountain man of “superhuman courage” who had trekked through the American West and Northern California in the 1820s.177 For Goethe, Smith was the quintessential white pioneer—a fur trapper, botanist, and nature aficionado—whose death in a Comanche raid had earned him near martyrdom status.178 In the late 1940s, Goethe suggested to Aubrey Drury, the president of the Save-the-Redwoods League (and Newton’s brother), that a grove commemorate this “great pathfinder and explorer, who was the first white man to cross the Sierra Nevada.”179 Goethe wrote the epigraph for the plaque, which was replicated almost verbatim and attached to the smooth face of a boulder surrounded by ferns and oxalis that he and a park superintendent had personally chosen.180 To this day it reads: “To Jedediah Smith, referred to as ‘Bible-Toter,’ first white man to cross from the Mississippi to the Pacific, thus starting the train of events which made California the 31st star in our flag. This Grove on the Smith River (which he discovered in 1828) dedicated to his memory by Mr. and Mrs. C. M. Goethe of Sacramento and by the State of California.”181 About ten years after the installation of the plaque, Aubrey Drury assured his friend that “indeed Jed Smith [has been] rescued from oblivion.”182 Through this act of place-naming Goethe literally wrote history onto nature and naturalized a particular rendition of history, memorializing the story of a vacant land, pregnant with promise, discovered, civilized, and ushered into the present by white pioneer stock on whose perpetuation California now depended.183 Goethe also facilitated the founding of the Luther Burbank Grove and was the primary donor to the Drury Brothers Grove, which adjoined his wife’s in the Prairie Creek Redwoods.184

  In March 1961, Goethe’s name was similarly etched in bronze when CSUS unveiled the C. M. Goethe Arboretum. Comprising seven acres on the fringe of the campus, the arboretum was established in 1959 as an outdoor laboratory for students in the biological sciences and to beautify the grounds.185 It was administered by a society headed by Dr. Albert Delisle, one of the faculty members whose research on plant and animal evolution had been funded by Goethe.186 In order to recognize Goethe’s generosity, Guy West, CSUS’s president, and Rodger Bishton, a close confidante who shared Goethe’s faith in eugenics and had received a fellowship from him for a project on “gifted children,” decided to imitate the tradition practiced at parks and museums across the Redwood Empire.187 With assistance from the Save-the-Redwoods League, they acquired a “good size redwood log,” about five feet in diameter, cut from a 602-year-old Mendocino county tree, for a dedicatory marker.188

  On the day the arboretum was officially dedicated, high-level administrators, faculty, and Sacramentans took part in the ceremony, reading notes of congratulation. Dr. William J. Van Der Berg, chairman of the college advisory board, lauded Goethe’s eugenic efforts “to increa
se the number of sound minds and bodies, and cut the chain of defective humans who crowd our institutions.”189 If you visit the arboretum today, below the round you will find a bronze tablet, which reads: “ERECTED IN HONOR OF CHARLES M. GOETHE GOOD FRIEND OF MAN AND NATURE AND PRESERVER OF THE BEST IN BOTH THROUGH GENEROUS CONTRIBUTIONS OF HIS TIME, HIS TALENTS, AND MATERIAL RESOURCES.”190 Below the round sits a time line, “A Sierran Redwood’s Reflections on the Second Millennium,” which lists about fifty salient events in the making of the modern world. It begins at the center with the Viking Leif Ericsson’s arrival in America via Nova Scotia, followed by, just to mention a few, the First and Second Crusades, the publication of The Canterbury Tales, Galileo’s scientific discoveries, Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population, the opening of the Suez Canal, the building of the Eiffel Tower, World War I, the outlawing of the Communist Party in the United States, the first human heart transplant, and the landing of man on the moon. The last two entries are 1972 and 1974, Nixon’s resignation and the fall of South Vietnam, respectively, indicating an origins story that tapered off less than a decade after Goethe’s death, as the university’s commitment to the arboretum dissipated.191

  Once Goethe’s will was executed, it became clear that his engagement with eugenic projects would continue into the next century. He had carefully planned his bequest to a mix of individuals and civic, scientific, and environmental groups, many focused exclusively on eugenics or human genetics.192 For example, Goethe gave a little over $25,000 each to the American Genetic Association, the AIFR, the Association for Voluntary Sterilization, and the Population Reference Bureau.193 Goethe was “generous beyond words” to the Save-the-Redwoods League, which received more than $80,000 in liquid assets and an interest-bearing endowment.194 He also bequeathed substantial monies to the Dight Institute at the University of Minnesota, one of the country’s first genetic counseling centers.195 However, Goethe reserved his biggest prize, more than $650,000, for CSUS, which had already benefited from multiple donations. There were disbursements to sustain the arboretum, produce a nature study manual, support the research of certain professors, such as Bishton, and fund students and projects in biology, eugenics, and population genetics.196 CSUS also became the repository for Goethe’s library and “letters and documents related to biology, eugenics and history” (much of which later disappeared under clouded circumstances), and the proprietor of his Julia Morgan home on “T” street, which Goethe requested be turned into “a recreation center for children and the aged, for a branch library and for a health museum, for a eugenics museum and a children’s museum or kindred purposes.”197

  Figure 6. Dedication of Charles M. Goethe Arboretum at California State University, Sacramento, March 25, 1961. Plaque in honor of Goethe reads: “ERECTED IN HONOR OF CHARLES M. GOETHE GOOD FRIEND OF MAN AND NATURE AND PRESERVER OF THE BEST IN BOTH THROUGH GENEROUS CONTRIBUTIONS OF HIS TIME, HIS TALENTS, AND MATERIAL RESOURCES.” Pictured in front of a 602-year-old redwood round, found in Mendocino County, are (from left) Warner L. Marsh, president of the C. M. Goethe Arboretum Society; Dr. William J. Van Den Berg, CSUS chair; and Guy A. West, CSUS president. Photo courtesy of the Department of Special Collections and University Archives, California State University, Sacramento. Charles M. Goethe Papers.

  Figure 7. Time line accompanying redwood slice at the Charles M. Goethe Arboretum. Photo courtesy of Andrew Stern.

  Goethe was famous when he died. At an extravaganza for his ninetieth birthday in 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson called Goethe “an American whose life has been so richly dedicated to the service of humanity,” accolades repeated by the likes of the Supreme Court chief justice Earl Warren, the secretary of the interior Stewart Udall, and the National Park Service director George B. Hartzog Jr. as well as the presidents of the Nature Conservancy and the Audubon Society.198 Goethe’s loyal comrade, Bishton, who arranged the event, prepared an elegantly bound program, profiling his mentor as a man devoted to human welfare, an inquisitive scientist, conservationist, educator, friend of youth, and church and civic leader, who had presciently grasped “long before most physicians . . . the relation of genetics to disease prevention.”199 Hundreds gave to the Goethe gift fund and even more sent words of appreciation.

  Even with so many friends in high places, Goethe realized that many saw his views as extreme. For instance in the 1940s, Carey McWilliams publicly denounced Goethe as the bigoted originator of the virulently anti-Japanese Home Front Commandos in The Nation magazine.200 And in 1949, during a period when many American eugenicists were fighting marginalization, Maurice A. Bigelow, executive secretary of the AES, griped to Popenoe about Goethe’s pamphlets. Granting that “much of his pamphlet is interesting reading if you read it as you would the Readers Digest,” he nonetheless asserted that many of Goethe’s vignettes “had no connection to eugenics,” were inciting confusion and, because of their “wide-spread distribution,” were “much more dangerous than the Eugenics Publishing Company of New York.”201 Goethe often grumbled about censorship and alleged that too many environmentalists had been co-opted by “hyphenates,” and “for selfish reasons, were advocating world hybridization.”202 If Goethe was a magnet of American eugenics in the 1920s and 1930s, by the midcentury he was beginning to repel. Nevertheless, until his dying day, it seems, Goethe had many sincere fans, although the possibility of being named in his will probably meant that some acquaintances treated him with esteem if not obsequiousness.

  For many of the European Americans who migrated to the Pacific West starting in the late nineteenth century, to colonize California was to lay stake to its landscapes, through manipulation of the soil, the revealing and preservation of wilderness, and the construction of parks and playgrounds. The quest to establish a new social order was premised on assumptions about the naturalness of male authority and the innate superiority of certain classes of species over others. Fears of race suicide could simultaneously pertain to redwoods and Anglo-Saxon pioneers: both needed shielding and safeguarding and awaited biological regeneration based on the principles of scientific and hereditarian management. Enamored of California’s brilliant topography and fascinating ecology, eugenicists such as Jordan, Merriam, and Goethe sought to remake their chosen state from the ground up. They inscribed their names and priorities onto California’s geography and at the same time invented and legitimized certain versions of the Golden State’s historical memory, lending their expert knowledge, professional authority, and financial resources. Their presence is apparent on plaques and maps, in forest groves and refuges, atop mountains and among the pantheons of founders and firsts that circulate in textbooks and brochures.

  There was no one singular way that eugenicists shaped California’s landscapes. As August Vollmer illustrates, xenophobia was not a mandatory requirement for the melding of hereditarian convictions and parks advocacy. However, there is no denying that the apparition of eugenics sits restlessly at the heart of American environmentalism, revisiting periodically during debates over urban sprawl, immigration, and overpopulation. Probably tree sitters, such as Julia Butterfly, who spend months if not years living in old growth redwoods to spare them from chainsaws and writing impassioned poetry about the wisdom of the sequoia, would be disconcerted if not aghast to learn that, close to a century later, their epiphanies closely echo those of the founders trio. And what about naturalist rangers? In 1964 Newton Drury, the director of the National Park Service in the 1940s, impressed on an interviewer, “I don’t think you can minimize the importance of C. M. Goethe in this whole program of nature conservation. There’s no question that he had a great effect on Stephen Mather and Madison Grant and some of the pioneers, both in the formation of the National Park Service and of the Save-the-Redwoods League.”203 Yet, for Goethe, strict immigration quotas, involuntary sterilization, population planning, Nordic domination, and nature conservation were one and the same; he brazenly conflated them through analogies that would make most contemporary biologists shudder. In the late 1940s, he
pondered: “Perhaps the greatest national gains from a really completed National Park system interlocks [sic] with State Parks’ chains, can be expected in the accelerated building of a eugenically-better nation. This would include gradual elimination of imbeciles, those insane through inheritance, carriers of congenital diseases, such as Huntington’s chorea, haemophilia. This would further reverse the tragic decline of the leadership type’s birthrate.”204 Very few, if any, other eugenicists or philanthropists for that matter would ever so cavalierly connect the out-breeding of bad genes to wilderness management. When analyzing Goethe’s legacy, it is tempting to compartmentalize the good, the bad, and the ugly. However, only exploring his life on its own inimitable terms can provide insight into the alliance between eugenics and environmentalism in twentieth-century California.

  CHAPTER 5

  Centering Eugenics on the Family

  In 1945, Mr. and Mrs. C came to the offices of the American Institute of Family Relations, located not far from central Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard. The couple and their two young daughters had recently moved to Southern California from Indianapolis and were on the verge of divorce. Mrs. C had confessed to her husband that she had an unconsummated infatuation with a male coworker, a “sinful” relationship for which she was wracked with guilt. Given their circumstances, Mr. and Mrs. C decided to seek marital counseling at the AIFR, which had been offering such services for fifteen years. Mrs. C explained to the counselor that she didn’t “like the feeling of being just” a wife whose “whole being [was] submerged in [her] home life or children.”1 She added that she felt “something [was] eating away at [her] all the time” and that her husband no longer sexually excited her, nor did she respect or admire him. Mrs. C wanted to avoid divorce, however, in order to “keep the home together because of the children.”2 For his part, Mr. C was happy with his new job in Los Angeles and did not want the marriage to end despite his wife’s transgressions.