Eugenic Nation

by Stern, Alexandra Minna

  22. On racism in nineteenth-century California, see Tomás Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994); Lisbeth Haas, Conquests and Historical Identities in California, 1769–1936 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995); Nayan Shah, Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001); Charles J. McClain, In Search of Equality: The Chinese Struggle against Discrimination in Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994); and Elmer Clarence Sandmeyer, The Anti-Chinese Movement in California (1973; reprinted, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991).

  23. See http://www.haynesfoundation.org; and Tom Sitton, John Randolph Haynes: California Progressive (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1992), chap. 11. When designing their foundation, the Hayneses designated seven major categories of support; the fourth was the “improvement of the human race by aiding and encouraging the science of eugenics.” Today, the foundation distributes up to three million dollars annually, primarily for local research projects, many of which, ironically, address the racial and social inequities spawned by eugenic racism in the first half of the twentieth century.

  24. See Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines; McClain, In Search of Equality; and Sandmeyer, Anti-Chinese Movement.

  25. See Albert Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society: From Mexican Pueblos to American Barrios in Santa Barbara and Southern California, 1848–1930 (1979; reprint, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996); and Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines.

  26. Second Biennial Report of the Department of Institutions for the Year Ending June 30, 1924 (Sacramento: California State Printing Office, 1924), 15.

  27. See Fox, So Far Disordered in Mind.

  28. Second Biennial Report of the Department of Institutions, 15.

  29. Statistical Report of the Department of Institutions of the State of California, Year Ending June 30, 1942 (Sacramento: California State Printing Office, 1942), 18.

  30. Seventh Biennial Report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections of the State of California from July 1, 1914 to June 30, 1916 (Sacramento: California State Printing Office, 1916), 56.

  31. Quoted in Biller, “Defending the Last Frontier,” 55.

  32. Fourth Biennial Report of the Department of Institutions for the Year Ending June 30, 1928 (Sacramento: California State Printing Office, 1928), 18.

  33. Sixth Biennial Report of the Department of Institutions for the Year Ending June 30, 1932 (Sacramento: California State Printing Office, 1932), 9; Statistical Report of the Department of Institutions of the State of California, Year Ending June 30, 1937 (Sacramento: California State Printing Office, 1937), 22; Statistical Report of the Department of Institutions of the State of California, Year Ending June 30, 1938 (Sacramento: California State Printing Office, 1938), 23.

  34. See Kevin Starr, Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 176–77.

  35. Statistical Report of the Department of Institutions of the State of California, Year Ending June 30, 1942 (Sacramento: California State Printing Office, 1942), 18.

  36. This founding motto appeared on all CCC publications in the 1920s and 1930s.

  37. “The Alien Land Law,” Transactions of the Commonwealth Club of California 15, no. 4 (1920): 175–212; “Quota or Exclusion for Japanese Immigrants?” The Commonwealth 8, no. 51 (1932): 285.

  38. Holmes published many books related to eugenics, the most important of which were A Bibliography of Eugenics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1924) and The Trend of the Race: A Study of Present Tendencies in the Biological Development of Civilized Mankind (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1921). On his eugenics courses, see “The Factors of Evolution in Man,” Bulletin of the University Extension, new series, 4, no. 22 (Jan. 1919), Folder: Holmes-Misc., Carton 2, Papers of Samuel J. Holmes (SJH), CB 935, Bancroft Library (BL), University of California at Berkeley (UCB); and “The University of California,” Eugenics 2, no. 9 (1929): 26–27. On his eugenic study of college students, see SJH to Dean A. O. Leuschner, Feb. 1, 1924, Folder: Outgoing Letters L, Box 2, SJH, CB 935, BL, UCB. On monetary incentives, see “Wants Prizes for Professors’ Babies,” Syracuse Herald, n.d., and “Bonus on Babies Urged by Savant,” San Francisco Journal, Oct. 19 1922, Loose Folders, Carton 4, SJH, CB 935, BL, UCB. Holmes was a member of the American Eugenics Society, the Eugenics Research Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

  39. Samuel J. Holmes, “Perils of the Mexican Invasion,” North American Review 227, no. 5 (1929): 615–23, Carton 1, offprints, SJH, CB 935, BL, UCB. Quotation from p. 617.

  40. Ibid., 617; also see Holmes, “An Argument against Mexican Immigration,” Transactions of the Commonwealth Club of California, part 2, 2, no. 12 (1926): 21–27.

  41. “Progress Report for 1928,” The Commonwealth, Part 2, 5, no. 5 (1929): 450.

  42. Reprint of Charles M. Goethe (CMG) to CCC Board of Directors, Aug. 1, 1924, included in Apr. 20, 1933, Notes and Minutes, Eugenics Section (ES), Commonwealth Club of California (CCC), unprocessed collection since acquired by the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

  43. Ibid.

  44. CMG to SJH, Feb. 20, 1924, Folder: Goethe, Box 1, SJH, CB 935, BL, UCB; “Progress Report for 1924,” Transactions of the Commonwealth Club of California 19, no. 11 (1925): 724; “Minutes of the Board of Governors, July 21, 1924,” CCC. The Board of Governors’ minutes indicate that Holmes accepted the chairmanship in October 1924. “Minutes of the Meeting of the Board of Governors,” Oct. 29, 1924, CCC.

  45. “Eugenics,” Transactions of the Commonwealth Club of California 21, no. 4, reproduced in The Commonwealth 2, no. 25 (1926): 153–187, quotations from 159, 182.

  46. “Sterilization in California,” Notes and Minutes, Sept. 26, 1925, ES, CCC.

  47. “Section on Eugenics,” Aug. 9, 1928, Notes and Minutes, ES, CCC.

  48. “Speaker: Stuart R. Ward,” Aug. 14, 1928, Notes and Minutes, ES, CCC.

  49. “Commonwealth Club of California, Section on Eugenics, Minutes of May 22, 1928,” Notes and Minutes, ES, CCC.

  50. DSJ to CBD, May 7, 1925, Papers of Charles B. Davenport (CBD), B:D27, American Philosophical Society (APS).

  51. CMG form letter, Mar. 27, 1928, Papers of Harry H. Laughlin (HHL), C-4–1, Special Collections, (SC), Truman State University (TSU).

  52. “Mexican Strays into California,” Eugenical News 11, no. 6 (1926): 88.

  53. On Proposition 187 and eugenic discourse, see Jonathan Xavier Inda, “Biopower, Reproduction, and the Migrant Woman’s Body,” in In Decolonial Voices: Chicana and Chicano Cultural Studies in the 21st Century, ed. Arturo J. Aldama and Naomi Quiñonez (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), 98–112; and Dorothy Nelkin and Mark Michaels, “Biological Categories and Border Controls: The Revival of Eugenics in Anti-Immigration Rhetoric,” International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 18, nos. 5–6 (1998): 35–63.

  54. See Kent A. Ono and John M. Sloop, Shifting Borders: Rhetoric, Immigration, and California’s Proposition 187 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002). On images of Mexican immigration in the 1990s, see Leo R. Chavez, Covering Immigration: Popular Images and the Politics of the Nation (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001).

  55. J. Harold Williams, Millis W. Clark, Mildred S. Covert, and Edythe K. Bryant, Whittier Social Case History Manual (Whittier, Calif.: California Bureau of Juvenile Research, Whittier State School, 1921), 50. See the Web site for the California Youth Authority (http://www.cya.ca.gov), which, interestingly, does not explicitly acknowledge the CBJR.

  56. Williams et al., Whittier Social Case History Manual, 50. The last issue of the Journal of Juvenile Research indicated that its publication would continue, in a different guise, as the California Journal of Guidance. Howev
er, I have not yet found any evidence that this journal was ever published. See “Editorial,” Journal of Juvenile Research 22, nos. 3–4 (1938): 143–44.

  57. See Second Biennial Report of the Department of Institutions; and Supplement to the Sixth Biennial Report of the Department of Institutions.

  58. See Mary E. Odem, Delinquent Daughters: Protecting and Policing Adolescent Female Sexuality in the United States, 1885–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).

  59. See Alexandra Minna Stern and Howard Markel, eds., Formative Years: Children’s Health in the United States, 1880–2000 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002).

  60. See Fox, So Far Disordered in Mind.

  61. See Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, 2nd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996).

  62. See Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity, rev. ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995).

  63. Lewis M. Terman, The Measurement of Intelligence: An Explanation of and a Complete Guide for the Use of the Stanford Revision and Extension of the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1916), 79; Paul Davis Chapman, Schools as Sorters: Lewis M. Terman, Applied Psychology, and the Intelligence Testing Movement, 1890–1930 (New York: New York University Press, 1988).

  64. Terman, Measurement of Intelligence, 79. His classifications were: 25 or below = idiot; 25–50 = imbecile; 50–70 = moron; 70–80 = borderline deficiency sometimes classifiable as dullness, often as feeblemindedness; 80–90 = dullness rarely classifiable as feeblemindedness; 90–110 = normal or average intelligence; 110–120 = superior intelligence; 120–140 = very superior intelligence; above 140 = “near” genius or genius. Any score below 70 indicated “definite feeblemindedness.”

  65. Ibid., 87.

  66. Terman, “Feeble Minded Children in the School,” in Report to the 1915 Legislature Committee on Mental Deficiency and the Proposed Institution for the Care of Feeble-Minded and Epileptic Persons (Whittier, Calif.: Whittier State School, Department of Printing Instruction, 1917), 45–53, contained in Papers of J. Harold Williams (JHW), Box 7, Collection 1504, Department of Special Collections (SC), University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). On the emergence of the “menace of the feebleminded,” see James W. Trent Jr., Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Mental Retardation in the United States (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994).

  67. Chapman, Schools as Sorters, chap. 1; J. Harold Williams, A Study of 150 Delinquent Boys, Research Laboratory of the Buckel Foundation, Department of Education, Stanford University, Bulletin no. 1 (1915).

  68. Terman, “Research in Mental Deviation among Children: A Statement of the Aims and Purposes of the Buckel Foundation,” Research Laboratory of the Buckel Foundation, Department of Education, Stanford University, Bulletin no. 2 (1915), 3.

  69. Williams, Study of 150 Delinquent Boys, 13; J. Harold Williams, “Early History of the California Bureau of Juvenile Research,” Journal of Juvenile Research 18, no. 4 (1934): 187–214.

  70. Williams, Study of 150 Delinquent Boys, 13. Also see Norman Fenton, The Delinquent Boy and the Correctional School (Claremont, Calif.: Claremont Colleges Guidance Center, 1935).

  71. Williams, “Early History of the California Bureau of Juvenile Research,” 191. Many offprints related to the CBJR’s formation are contained in JHW, Collection 1504, SC, UCLA.

  72. Williams et al., Whittier Social Case History Manual, 50. Also see entries on the CBJR in Biennial Reports of the Department of Institutions of the State of California for the years 1922–1934; and CBD to J. Harold Williams (JHW), May 14, 1921, CBD, B:D27, APS.

  73. Ninth Biennial Report of the State Commission in Lunacy for the Two Years Ending June 30, 1914 (Sacramento: California State Printing Office, 1914), 8–9; J. Harold Williams, “Defective, Delinquent, and Dependent Boys,” Department of Research, Bulletin no. 1 (Whittier, Calif.: Whittier State School, Department of Printing Instruction, 1915).

  74. Fred C. Nelles (FCN) to CBD, July 25, 1917, CBD, B:D27, APS; Williams, “Early History of the California Bureau of Juvenile Research,” 212–13. This is one of the most fascinating and least explored aspects of California eugenics and is preserved in voluminous case files and other documents, many on microfilm, contained in the ERO papers at the APS. Cowdery’s first study using ERO methods was published in 1916; see Karl M. Cowdery, “Analysis of Field Data Concerning One Hundred Delinquent Boys,” Journal of Delinquency 1, no. 3 (1916): 129–53.

  75. Williams et al., Whittier Social Case History Manual, 50.

  76. Ibid.; JHW to Dr. Fred Kuhlmann (Faribault, Minnesota), Nov. 29, 1920, CBD, B:D27, APS; Davenport, The Trait Book, Bulletin no. 6, ERO (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.: ERO, 1912); Harry H. Laughlin with Charles B. Davenport, How to Make a Eugenical Family Study, Bulletin no. 13, ERO (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.: ERO, 1915).

  77. Williams also used the following symbols: ? for probably feebleminded, I for insane, N for mentality normal, Sx for immoral, TB for tubercular, and a hand with a pointed pinkie finger to signify commitment to an institution. See Williams, “Heredity and Juvenile Delinquency,” Box 7, JHW, 1504, SC, UCLA.

  78. Williams et al., Whittier Social Case History Manual, 59.

  79. “State of California, Bureau of Juvenile Research, Social Case History no. 351,” Series 7, Box 1, Papers of the Eugenics Record Office (ERO), APS; also see microfilm reels 1822196, Box 56; 1822577, Box 58. For how public health officials in Los Angeles represented and sought to reform Mexican maternal and infant hygiene in similar ways, see Natalia Molina, “Illustrating Cultural Authority: Medicalized Representations of Mexican Communities in Early-Twentieth-Century Los Angeles,” Aztlán 28 (2003): 129–43.

  80. Fred C. Nelles, “Changes in the Nature of the Population of Whittier State School,” Journal of Delinquency 9, no. 6 (1925): 231.

  81. See Research staff of the Whittier State School, “The Present Status of Juvenile Delinquency in California,” Journal of Delinquency 5, no. 5 (1920): 183–89; Paul E. Bowers, “The Necessity for Sterilization,” Journal of Delinquency 6, no. 5 (1921): 487–504; Paul Popenoe, “The Extent of Mental Disease and Defect in the American Population,” Journal of Juvenile Research 13, no. 2 (1929): 97–103; Norman Fenton and Paul Popenoe, “Twenty-Five Years of Eugenic Sterilization,” Journal of Juvenile Research 19, no. 4 (1935): 201–4; Norman Fenton (NF) to Lewis M. Terman (LMT), Aug. 3, 1933, Folder 4, Box 14, Papers of Lewis M. Terman (LMT), SC38, SC, SU; and Paul Popenoe and Norman Fenton, “Sterilization as a Social Measure,” unpublished ms., Folder 6, Box 1, ESGHBF, IA, CIT.

  82. See Gilbert Gonzalez, Chicano Education in the Era of Segregation (Philadelphia: Balch Institute Press, 1990); Chapman, Schools as Sorters; Haas, Conquests and Historical Identities, 189–96; and Judith Rosenberg Raftery, Land of Fair Promise: Politics and Reform in Los Angeles Schools, 1885–1941 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1992).

  83. Gonzalez, Chicano Education, 83; Irving G. Hendrick and Donald L. MacMillan, “Modifying the Public School Curriculum to Accommodate Mentally Retarded Students: Los Angeles in the 1920s,” Southern California Quarterly 70, no. 4 (1988): 399–414. Raftery emphasizes that some elementary school teachers, especially those with many Mexican pupils, were highly dissatisfied with the intelligence tests recommended by the CBJR and either translated tests into Spanish or administered alternative exams. See Raftery, Land of Fair Promise, chap. 5.

  84. Popenoe, “Extent of Mental Disease,” 99. In the mid-1910s, this district initiated testing with the Stanford-Binet; see Laura R. Bennett, “Department of Psychology in Los Angeles City Schools: A Study of the Mentally Different,” California State Journal of Medicine 14, no. 3 (1916): 101–3.

  85. See David G. Gutiérrez, “Introduction,” in Between Two Worlds: Mexican Immigrants in the United States, ed. David G. Gutiérrez (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1996), xi–xxvii; and Mark Reisler, By the Sweat of Their Brow: Mexican Immigrant L
abor in the United States, 1900–1940 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1976).

  86. See Douglas Monroy, Rebirth: Mexican Los Angeles from the Great Migration to the Great Depression (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999), chap. 3.

  87. See Charles Wollenberg, All Deliberate Speed: Segregation and Exclusion in California Schools, 1855–1975 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976).

  88. Ibid.; Haas, Conquests and Historical Identities; Robert M. Fogelson, The Fragmented Metropolis: Los Angeles, 1850–1930 (1967; reprint, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993).

  89. Haas, Conquests and Historical Identities, 190; Raftery, Land of Fair Promise, 110–19.

  90. Wollenberg, All Deliberate Speed, 112.

  91. On vocational education in California, see Harvey A. Kantor, Learning to Earn: School, Work, and Vocational Reform in California, 1880–1930 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988).

  92. Williams, “Early History of the California Bureau of Juvenile Research,” 195.

  93. See, for example, Lewis M. Terman, Virgil E. Dickson, A. H. Sutherland, Raymond H. Franzen, C. R. Tupper, and Grace Fernald, Intelligence Tests and School Reorganization (Yonkers-on-Hudson, N.Y.: World Book, 1923), in which Terman’s students reported on tests that repeated these results in different parts of California. I have also arrived at this conclusion after close analysis of all volumes of the Journal of Delinquency/Journal of Juvenile Research from 1916 to 1938.

  94. See Carl C. Brigham, A Study of American Intelligence (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1923).

  95. Kimball Young, “Mental Differences in Certain Immigrant Groups,” University of Oregon Publications 1, no. 11 (1922): 77–78.

  96. Kate Gordon, “Report on Psychological Tests of Orphan Children,” Journal of Delinquency 4, no. 1 (1919): 46–56, esp. 50.

  97. Julia Mathews, “A Survey of 341 Delinquent Girls in California,” Journal of Delinquency 8, nos. 3–4 (1923): 196–231.