The Orphans of Davenport
Page 33
Special thanks to art historian Tripp Evans, who provided important background, as well as to historian of eugenics Jonathan Spiro, whose research addressed the interconnections among eugenicists. Historian John Burnham shared his insights about pre–World War II psychology, and psychologist Leon Kamin talked with me at length about eugenics’ influence upon the events I discuss. Biologist Caleb Finch kindly provided information about Alfred Mirsky. Social psychologist Arlene Vadum read and unstintingly critiqued the narrative and helped me clarify historical issues, all with great good cheer. And from his long career in experimental psychology and association with some of the narrative’s figures, Lewis Lipsitt’s contribution and friendship were invaluable.
Neuroscientists Bruce McEwen, of Rockefeller University, and Charles Nelson, of Harvard, read drafts, talked with me about their studies, and provided essential feedback. In addition, Jack Shonkoff, Director of Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child, whose work introduced me to the scientific and policy issues related to early development, provided important insights. From Harvard’s Kurt Fischer and Terrance Tivnan, I gained extensive knowledge of psychology’s history that significantly expanded my thinking.
In researching the lives of Davenport’s orphans, I was fortunate to have been in touch with a subject from Harold Skeels’s 1939 and 1966 studies, Louis Branca. Lou’s accounts of his lived institutional experience and its influence upon his early and adult life provided vivid context. My debt to him, and to his wife, Cass Dalglish, can never be repaid. My conversations with Harold Skeels’s mentee, Simon Auster, granted me access to their exchanges. Also, Milton J. E. Senn’s interviews with figures from the child study movement were indispensable.
Dedicated archivists provided immeasurable assistance, especially University Archivist David McCartney, at the University of Iowa Special Collections, whose knowledge, expertise, discoveries, and generosity greatly benefited the narrative. Mary Bennett, Special Collections Coordinator at the State Historical Society of Iowa, supplied important documents and shared her knowledge of the university’s history. From my first reading of Marie Skodak Crissey’s papers, David Baker, now Emeritus, and Senior Archivist Lizette Royer Barton, at the Cummings Center for the History of Psychology, always provided unstinting aid. Tim Noakes, Library Specialist at Stanford University’s Special Collections, went above and beyond, as did staff at the many archives I consulted, including at the National Library of Medicine, the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation, the University of Illinois libraries’ Special Collections, the Rockefeller University Archives, and the University of Minnesota Special Collections.
In countless ways this project benefited from the tireless assistance of University of Iowa’s Olsen Graduate Research Fellow, Richard Dana, whose wide-ranging knowledge and research expertise constantly amazed. Also, University of Iowa library science student, Anna Tonsfeldt, unearthed unexpected documents, and Hang Nguyen, reference librarian at the State Historical Society of Iowa, helped locate important photographs.
Bringing the narrative to public attention became possible because my extraordinary agent, Ayesha Pande, took a chance on me. From our first meeting she grasped the significance of the Davenport orphans’ story and scaffolded its journey to publication. Also, Peter Ginna asked important questions and provided critiques that always enhanced my thinking. At Liveright, editors Katie Adams, Gina Iaquinta, and Dan Gerstle believed in the work and brought to it their outstanding skills and judgment. Especially important was Janet Greenblatt’s editorial discernment. And for the opportunity to realize this project, I am especially grateful to Liveright’s editor in chief, Bob Weil.
The long arm of the universe granted me support from loving friends and family. Mary Kiesling, at Harvard, first affirmed that the Iowa story should be told and provided steadfast encouragement. Also, Maya Chaudhari, Louise and Doug Colligan, Kaila and Arthur Eisenkraft, Carol Fishman, Maggy Gorrill, Priscilla Macmillan, Ellen Rafel-Frankel, Diane Ranes, Isabel Sklar, Alexandra Sacks, Jill Sacks, Phyllis Sonnenschein, Stella Um and Colin Teichholtz, and Christine Wasserstein provided tangible and spiritual sustenance along with critical judgments. Of exceptional importance were Sheridan Gould and Gerry Lewis, whose active support exceeded anything I could have imagined. Marjorie Brent, Katie Liberman and Ezra Cohen, and especially my son, Daniel Berkman, and daughter-in-law, Elyse Berkman, inspired me with their confidence, humor, insight, and love. And my lifelong friend Eric Davidson’s belief in this project, and in me, made the rest possible.
NOTES
The primary sources for The Orphans of Davenport are records, letters, memorandums, and reports, held in twelve archives. The Cummings Center for the History of Psychology at the University of Akron holds Marie Skodak Crissey’s papers, and because Harold Skeels entrusted his papers to her, most of those are included there. Crissey saved everything, and her archive provides a comprehensive record of the Iowa station’s work and much about Skodak’s colleagues. The University of Iowa Special Collections in Iowa City holds papers from Beth Wellman and also some from George Stoddard and Harold Skeels. Of particular note is the transcript of discussions between the Iowans and Albert E. Wiggam—reading it is close to being there. In this archive, too, are documents related to the three institutions in which Davenport orphans lived, as well as additional material related to the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station. The State of Iowa Historical Society holds a treasury of important material, especially an extensive autobiographical report from Cora Bussey Hillis. Invaluable and unique are Iowa records and newspaper articles privately held by Louis C. Branca’s widow, Cass Dalglish. Essential are Lewis M. Terman’s letters held in Stanford University’s Special Collections. These cover several decades of correspondence with publishers, colleagues, fellow eugenicists, and with Wiggam. George Stoddard’s papers, held at the University of Illinois, contain drafts, reports, and a collection of letters. In the National Library of Medicine Archives at the National Institutes of Health are the indispensable transcripts of Milton J. E. Senn’s interviews. Senn’s appreciation for the significance of the 1930s–1950s child study movement has not been adequately recognized. Also important are Alfred E. Mirsky’s papers from Rockefeller University’s archive and documents from the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation. Valuable, too, were the Florence Goodenough papers held in the University of Minnesota’s Special Collections.
Abbreviations
AEM
Alfred E. Mirsky Papers, Archives of Rockefeller University
CBH
Cora Bussey Hillis Papers, State of Iowa Historical Society, Des Moines
CGI
Child Guidance Interviews, National Library of Medicine Archives, Bethesda, MD
FLG
Florence L. Goodenough Papers, Special Collections, University of Minnesota
GDS
George D. Stoddard Papers, Special Collections, University of Illinois Libraries
JPK
Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Archive, Kennedy Library, Columbia Point, Boston, MA
LCB
Louis C. Branca Papers, privately held
LMT
Lewis M. Terman Papers, Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries
MJES
Milton J. E. Senn Oral History Collection, National Library of Medicine Archives, Bethesda, MD
MSC
Marie Skodak Crissey Papers, Cummings Center for the History of Psychology, University of Akron, OH
SIHS
State of Iowa Historical Society Collections
UISC
University of Iowa Special Collections
Prologue
1.Mae Habenicht, 1935, State of Iowa Official Summary on Case of Infant Wendell Hoffman. Iowa Child Welfare Bureau State Board of Control. LCB.
2.Amy Vogel, “Regulating Degeneracy: Eugenic Sterilization in Iowa, 1911–1977,” Annals of Iowa 52, no. 2 (1995): 129.
3.Lewis M. Terman, The Measurement of Intelligence: An Explanation of and a Complete Guide for t
he Use of the Stanford Revision and Extension of the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916), 324–30.
4.Lewis M. Terman, “The Mental Test as a Psychological Method,” Psychological Review 31, no. 2 (1924): 106.
5.Vogel, “Regulating Degeneracy,” 119, 123; Lutz Kaelber, “Eugenics: Compulsory Sterilization in 50 American States,” accessed December 12, 2011, http://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/.
6.Vogel, “Regulating Degeneracy,” 123.
7.Louis C. Branca, interview by Marilyn Brookwood, September 10–11, 2012.
8.Anna Gaul, “The Day the Civil War Orphans Arrived in the Quad-Cities,” Quad-City Times, November 16, 2015, accessed April 9, 2019, https://qctimes.com/news/local/the-day-the-civil-war-orphans-arrived-in-the-quad/article_e4d2ae88-3df7-58ff-8a39-1f812f4ef70d.html.
9.M. T. Gass, The Iowa Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home, Iowa Board of Control, 1901.
10.Gass, Iowa Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home.
11.Gass, Iowa Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home.
12.Case 11, Harold M. Skeels, Experimental Group Records, MSC.
13.Harold M. Skeels and Harold B. Dye, “A Study of the Effects of Differential Stimulation on Mentally Retarded Children,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Mental Deficiency, Chicago, May 3–6, 1939. Journal of Psycho-Asthenics 44, no.1 (1939): 114–36.
14.Hamilton Cravens, Before Head Start: the Iowa Station & America’s Children (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1994), 156.
15.Cravens, Before Head Start, 156.
16.Charles B. Davenport, Eugenics: The Science of Human Improvement by Better Breeding (New York: Holt, 1910), 15.
17.Florence L. Goodenough, “Racial Differences in the Intelligence of School Children,” Journal of Experimental Education 9, no. 3 (1926): 388–97.
18.Bird T. Baldwin, Eva A. Fillmore, and Lora Hadley, Farm Children: An Investigation of Rural Child Life in Selected Areas of Iowa (New York: Appleton, 1930), 163.
19.Benjamin R. Simpson, “The Wandering IQ: Is It Time for It to Settle Down?” Journal of Psychology 7, no. 2 (January 1939): 351–67.
20.Florence L. Goodenough to Leta S. Hollingworth, April 5, 1939, FLG.
21.Benjamin R. Simpson, “You Can’t Train the Intellect before It Arrives,” Scientific Monthly 43, no. 4 (1936): 346.
Chapter One: How It All Began
1.Marie Skodak Crissey, interview by Milton J. E. Senn, November 29, 1978, unnumbered transcript, MJES.
2.Marie Skodak Crissey, interview by Barbara Kalbfell, November 5, 1979, CGI.
3.Tom Morain, “The Great Depression Begins (1920s),” Iowa Pathways, Iowa Public Television, July 17, 2017, accessed November 17, 2017, http://www.iptv.org/iowapathways/mypath/great-depression-begins-1920s.
4.William H. Thompson, Transportation in Iowa: A Historical Summary (Ames: Iowa Department of Transportation, 1989), 167–202.
5.Marie Skodak Crissey, “Marie Skodak Crissey,” in A History of Developmental Psychology in Autobiography, ed. Dennis Thompson and John D. Hogan (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), 46–70.
6.Skodak Crissey, “Marie Skodak Crissey,” in History, 51.
7.Skodak Crissey, in History, 51.
8.Skodak Crissey, in History, 51.
9.Skodak Crissey, in History, 51.
10.Skodak Crissey, in History, 51.
11.Skodak Crissey, in History, 50.
12.Marie Skodak Crissey, “Marie Skodak Crissey,” in Models of Achievement: Reflections of Eminent Women in Psychology, ed. Agnes N. O’Connell and Nancy F. Russo (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 72.
13.Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 80.
14.Skodak Crissey, “Marie Skodak Crissey,” in History, 51.
15.Skodak Crissey, in History, 52.
16.Skodak Crissey, in History, 52.
17.Skodak Crissey, in History, 52.
18.Skodak Crissey, “Marie Skodak Crissey,” in Models, 73.
19.Leila Zenderland, Measuring Minds: Henry Herbert Goddard and the Origins of American Intelligence Testing (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 92–93.
20.Marie Skodak Crissey, interview by Henry Minton, January 15, 1982, 26, MSC.
21.Alfred Binet, Les Idées Modernes Sur Les Enfants (Paris: Flammarion, 1909), 346.
22.Zenderland, Measuring Minds, 95.
23.Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon, The Development of Intelligence in Children (Nashville, TN: Williams Printing, 1980), 40.
24.Binet and Simon, Development of Intelligence, 40.
25.Frank S. Freeman, Theory and Practice of Psychological Testing (New York: Holt, 1955), 104.
26.Binet and Simon, Development of Intelligence, 59.
27.Binet and Simon, Development of Intelligence, 59, 62.
28.Binet and Simon, Development of Intelligence, 50.
29.Zenderland, Measuring Minds, 95.
30.Henry H. Goddard, The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeblemindedness (New York: Macmillan, 1912), 42–61.
31.Sarah F. Rose, No Right to Be Idle (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 82–83.
32.Rose, No Right to Be Idle, 10.
33.Ward W. Millias, “Charles Bernstein, 1872–1942,” American Journal of Mental Deficiency 47, no. 1 (1942): 17.
34.Michael A. Bernstein, 2009, “Dr. Charles Bernstein,” Find a Grave website, accessed June 17, 2017. www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=34459219.
35.Skodak Crissey, “Marie Skodak Crissey,” in History, 68.
36.Zenderland, Measuring Minds, 102–103.
37.Harold Skeels, R. Updegraff, B. L. Wellman, and H. M. Williams, “A Study of Environmental Stimulation: An Orphanage Preschool Project,” University of Iowa Studies in Child Welfare 15, no. 4 (1938): 10–13.
38.William H. Thompson, “The 1930s—Depression and Its Aftermath,” in Transportation in Iowa: A Historical Summary (Ames: Iowa Department of Transportation, 1989), 183.
39.“Agricultural Reports Forecast Crop Failure Over Most of United States, Grain Shortage Possible,” Ames Daily Tribune, June 26, 1933.
40.Tim Egan, The Worst Hard Time (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 117.
41.Skodak Crissey, “Marie Skodak Crissey,” in History, 56.
42.Skodak Crissey, “Marie Skodak Crissey,” in Models, 74.
43.Skodak Crissey, in Models, 74.
44.Skodak Crissey, in History, 57.
45.Louis C. Branca, interview by Marilyn Brookwood, June 4, 2015.
46.Marie Skodak Crissey, interview by Henry L. Minton, January 15, 1982, 5.
47.Skodak Crissey, “Marie Skodak Crissey,” in History, 57.
Chapter Two: Starting Over
1.Marie Skodak Crissey, interview by Senn, 1978, 18–19, MJES.
2.Lauren G. Wispe and James H. Ritter, “Where America’s Recognized Psychologists Received Their Doctorates,” American Psychologist 19, no. 7 (1964): 634–44.
3.Cora B. Hillis, “How the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station Came into Being” (unpublished, 1919), 2, CBH.
4.Alice B. Smuts, Science in the Service of Children 1893–1935 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 130–31.
5.Hillis, “Iowa Child Welfare Research Station,” 3.
6.Hillis, “Iowa Child Welfare Research Station,” 7.
7.Hillis, “Iowa Child Welfare Research Station,” 17.
8.Carl Seashore to Cora Bussey Hillis, in Pioneering in Child Welfare: A History of the Child Welfare Research Station, 1917–1933, ed. Dorothy Bradbury (Iowa City: University of Iowa, 1933), 17.
9.Ginalie Swaim, “Cora Bussey Hillis: Woman of Vision,” Iowa Heritage Illustrated 85, no. 2 (2004): 124.
10.Quoted in Hillis, “Iowa Child Welfare Research Station,” 22.
11.Cravens, Before Head Start, 28.
12.Baldwin, Fillmore, and Hadley, Farm Children, 27–48, 64, 122.
13.Cravens,
Before Head Start, 102–105.
14.Baldwin, Fillmore, and Hadley, Farm Children, 163.
15.Thomas H. Morgan, “Human Inheritance,” The American Naturalist 58. no. 658 (September-October 1924): 406–9.
16.Bird T. Baldwin, “Heredity and Environment—or Capacity and Training?” Journal of Educational Psychology 19, no. 6 (1928): 405.
17.George D. Stoddard, “George Stoddard, An Autobiography,” in Leaders in American Education, ed. Robert J. Havighurst (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 321.
18.Stoddard, in Havighurst, Leaders, 322.
19.Raymond E. Fancher, The Intelligence Men, Makers of the I.Q. Controversy (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985), 58.
20.George D. Stoddard, The Pursuit of Education: An Autobiography (New York: Vantage Press, 1981), 38.
21.Terman, Measurement of Intelligence, 79.
22.Stoddard, Pursuit of Education, 329.
23.Skodak Crissey, interview by Senn, 1978, 16–17, MJES.
24.James Fox, “Dean Stoddard Defends Work of Iowans at Columbus Meeting of AAAS,” The Daily Iowan, December 29, 1939.
25.Beth L. Wellman, “Some New Basis for Interpretation of the IQ,” Pedagogical Seminary and Journal of Genetic Psychology 41, no. 1 (1932): 119.
26.Beth L. Wellman, “The Effects of Preschool Attendance upon the IQ,” Journal of Experimental Education 1, no. 2 (1932): 69.