Re: Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)
Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2020 5:41 am
Eugenics Record Office
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/28/20
The Eugenics Record Office (ERO), located in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, United States, was a research institute that gathered biological and social information about the American population, serving as a center for eugenics and human heredity research from 1910 to 1939. It was established by the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Station for Experimental Evolution, and subsequently administered by its Department of Genetics.[1]
Both its founder, Charles Benedict Davenport, and its director, Harry H. Laughlin, were major contributors to the field of eugenics in the United States. Its mission was to collect substantial information on the ancestry of the American population, to produce propaganda that was made to fuel the eugenics movement, and to promote of the idea of race-betterment.
History
The eugenics movement was popular and viewed as progressive in the early-twentieth-century United States.[2] Charles Davenport was one of the leaders of this campaign and avidly believed that it was necessary to apply Mendelian Genetics principles to humans. Davenport's wife, Gertrude Davenport, was also an important figure in this movement and the establishment of the ERO.[3] Gertrude Davenport was an embryologist and a geneticist who wrote papers with her husband supporting the idea that Mendelian genetics theories applied to humans.
Supported by the argument that the eugenics office would collect information for human genetics research, Davenport convinced the Carnegie Institute to establish the ERO.[4] He was well connected to wealthy people during the time and he lobbied them to finance his vision of the ERO. The ERO was financed primarily by Mary Harriman (widow of railroad baron E. H. Harriman),[5] the Rockefeller family, and then the Carnegie Institution until 1939. In 1935 the Carnegie Institution sent a team to review the ERO's work, and as a result the ERO was ordered to stop all work. In 1939 the Carnegie Institution's new President, Vannevar Bush, forced Laughlin's retirement and withdrew funding for the ERO entirely, leading to its closure at the end of that year.[6]
Superintendent Harry H. Laughlin, formerly a school superintendent in Iowa, held a position akin to that of an assistant director of the ERO. Charles Davenport appointed Laughlin as a head of the ERO due to Laughlin's extensive knowledge about breeding and the implementation of this knowledge in humans.[7] Under the direction of Laughlin, the ERO advocated laws that led to the forced sterilization of many Americans it categorized as 'socially inadequate'.[8]
The endeavors of the Eugenics Record Office were facilitated by the work of various committees. The Committee on Inheritance of Mental Traits included among its members Robert M. Yerkes and Edward L. Thorndike.[9] The Committee on Heredity of Deafmutism included Alexander Graham Bell. Harry H. Laughlin was on the Committee on Sterilization, and the Committee on the Heredity of the Feeble Minded included, among others, Henry Herbert Goddard. Other prominent board members included scientists like Irving Fisher, William E. Castle, and Adolf Meyer.
In the 1920s, the ERO merged with the Station for Experimental Evolution and adopted the name of the Department of Genetics of the Carnegie Institute.[10]
Eventually, the ERO closed on December 1939 in part due to the disapproval it received. The information that had been collected by the ERO was distributed amongst other genetic research based organizations and collections services.[1]
The ERO's reports, articles, charts, and pedigrees were considered scientific facts in their day, but have since been discredited. In 1944 its records were transferred to the Charles Fremont Dight Institute for the Promotion of Human Genetics at the University of Minnesota. When the Dight Institute closed in 1991, the genealogical material was filmed by the Genealogical Society of Utah and given to the Center for Human Genetics. The non-genealogical material was not filmed and was given to the American Philosophical Society Library. The American Philosophical Society has a copy of the microfilm as well. Today, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory maintains the full historical records, communications and artifacts of the ERO for historical,[11] teaching and research purposes. The documents are housed in a campus archived and can be accessed online[12] and in a series of multimedia websites.[13]
Methods
The ERO collected research mostly through questionnaires. These questionnaires asked questions which described the characteristics of individual people and their families. These characteristics ranged from physical to temperamental properties. Many of these questionnaires were collected by field workers, usually educated women (who had few other jobs open to them), who would go door-to-door asking people to fill out this information. Many of these women had bachelor's degrees in biology, and graduate school degrees were not uncommon.[14] Additionally, the ERO had other methods of collecting these questionnaires such as sending them through the mail, and promoting them as methods for families to learn about their genetic lineage and family history.[1]
The research collected by these field workers provided much of the information which facilitated the passage of several laws during the 1920s.[1]
The ERO disseminated its information and its message via a variety of outlets. These included a journal called Eugenical News, posters with propaganda full messages about intelligent breeding, and pamphlets with information on the movement.[10]
Controversy
Eugenics was and continues to be a controversial issue due to the pressure radical eugenicists put on the government to pass legislation that would restrict the liberties of the people who had traits that could be considered undesirable.[1] Specifically, the ERO dedicated its resources to the restriction of immigrants and the forced sterilization of individuals with undesirable characteristics. They promoted their ideas through the distribution of propaganda that came in the form of images and information packets.
Something else that caused tension within and surrounding the ERO was Harry H. Laughlin's radical policy suggestions. He was known for presenting fraudulent evidence to support policies of forced sterilization and was known for dogmatism. Furthermore, the rise of Nazism in the 1930s and their use of and belief in eugenics led to opposition to the American program. The ERO finally being closed in 1939.[15]
References
1. Tom. "Eugenics Record Office - Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory - Library & Archives". library.cshl.edu. Retrieved 2017-04-21.
2. "Haunted Files: The Eugenics Record Office (October 3, 2014 – March 13, 2015) – Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU". apa.nyu.edu. Retrieved 2017-04-21.
3. "The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (1910-1939) | The Embryo Project Encyclopedia". embryo.asu.edu. Retrieved 2017-04-21.
4. Allen, Garland E. (1986-01-01). "The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, 1910-1940: An Essay in Institutional History". Osiris. 2: 225–264. doi:10.1086/368657. JSTOR 301835. PMID 11621591.
5. Comfort, Nathaniel C. (2009-06-30). The Tangled Field: Barbara... ISBN 9780674029828. Retrieved 2011-02-03.
6. See Jan A. Witkowski, "Charles Benedict Davenport, 1866-1944," in Jan A. Witkowski and John R. Inglis, eds., Davenport’s Dream: 21st Century Reflections on Heredity and Eugenics (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2008), p. 52.
7. "The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (1910-1939) | The Embryo Project Encyclopedia". embryo.asu.edu. Retrieved 2017-04-21.
8. Wilson, Philip K (2002). "Harry Laughlin's eugenic crusade to control the 'socially inadequate' in Progressive Era America". Patterns of Prejudice. 36 (1): 49–67. doi:10.1080/003132202128811367. ISSN 0031-322X.
9. Zenderland, Leila (2001), Measuring Minds: Henry Herbert Goddard and the Origins of American Intelligence Testing, New York: Cambridge University Press, p. 164.
10. Office, Eugenics Record (2000-09-01). "Eugenics Record Office Records". Retrieved 2017-04-21.
11. See Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (Alfred A. Knopf, 1985); Elof A. Carlson: The Unfit: The History of a Bad Idea (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2001); Jan A. Witkowski and John R. Inglis, eds., Davenport’s Dream: 21st Century Reflections on Heredity and Eugenics (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2008)
12. CSHL Archives general search: “eugenics” [1] Carnegie Institution of Washington Eugenics Record Office Collection: [2]Charles B. Davenport Collection: [3] The study of human heredity; Methods of collecting, charting, and analyzing data: [4]The Eugenics Record Office at the end of twenty-seven months work: [5]
13. DNALC web pages on Eugenics: [6]; DNALC Image Archives on the Eugenics Movement: [7]; [8]; DNALC Chronicle of eugenics: [9];
14. "The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (1910-1939) | The Embryo Project Encyclopedia". embryo.asu.edu. Retrieved 2017-04-21.
15. "EugenicsArchive". http://www.eugenicsarchive.org. Retrieved 2017-04-21.
Further reading
• Black, Edwin (2003). War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race. New York; London: Four Walls Eight Windows. ISBN 1-56858-258-7.
• Karier, Clarence J, "Testing for Order and Control in the Corporate Liberal State", in Karier, CJ; Violas, P; Spring, J (eds.), Roots of Crisis: American Education in the Twentieth Century, pp. 108–37 [112].
• Kevles, Daniel J (2001), In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity, Cambridge, MA, US: Harvard University Press.
External links
• Eugenics Archive – features much material from the ERO archives.
• Eugenics Records Office (finding aid), American Philosophical Society Library.
• ERO (index), American Philosophical Society Library, archived from the original on 2004-10-12, retrieved 2004-10-21.
*************************************
Eugenics Record Office
by Archives at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Accessed: 3/29/20
This collection was generated by the Eugenics Record Office which was created as a department of the Carnegie Institution of Washington Station (CIW) for Experimental Evolution at Cold Spring Harbor New York. The Carnegie Institution of Washington engaged in research in biology from 1904 using a tract of about 9 acres leased for 50 years from the Wawepex [Wauwepex] Society in Cold Spring Harbor NY. With Charles Davenport as the Director, a laboratory was built and the “station” opened in June 1904; it was named “Station for Experimental Evolution” (SEE) in 1906. [url]In 1910, with funding from Mrs. E. H. Harriman, an 80 acre farm near the SEE was purchased, and an office building was erected to establish [url=http://survivorbb.rapeutation.com/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=4123&start=253]the Eugenics Record Office (ERO)[/url][/url]. In 1918, Mrs. Harriman transferred the farm and building to CIW along with an endowment for its maintenance. In 1921 the SEE and ERO were combined into the CIW Department of Genetics with Charles Davenport as the Director. After Charles Davenport retired in 1934, Dr. Albert Blakeslee served as Director of the CIW Department of Genetics until 1941 when Milislav Demerec was named Director. The ERO closed in December 1939 and materials including the collection of forms containing hereditary and genealogical information records were put into storage. At this point the name of the ERO was changed to Genetics Record Office. In 1948 the records from the Eugenics Record Office were donated to the University of Minnesota for use by the Dight Institute of Human Genetics. That material was ultimately dispersed amongst three institutions: the American Philosophical Society, Jackson Laboratories and The Genealogical Society of Utah.
The ERO was devoted to the collection and analysis of American family genetic and traits history records. These eugenics studies collected information such as inborn physical, mental and temperamental properties to enable the family to trace the segregation and recombination of inborn or heritable qualities. The family study files include individual analysis cards, field worker reports, pedigree charts, and special trait studies. Davenport was president of the American Society of Zoologists and in 1910 he founded the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, and appointed Harry H. Laughlin to direct it. H. H. Laughlin became a spokesman for the programmatic side of the previous eugenics movement, lobbying for eugenic legislation to restrict immigration and sterilize "defectives," educating the public on eugenic health, and disseminating eugenic ideas widely. The Record Office formally came under the aegis of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1918.
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/28/20
As to the many institutions in America where admirable scientific work is being carried on in this field, there is one which I must, for two reasons, be allowed on this occasion to pick out for special mention, and that is the Eugenics Record Office, now a department of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, located on Long Island, New York. In the first place, it has for many years been under the direction of Charles B. Davenport, the President of this Congress, with Harry H. Laughlin, Secretary to the Congress, in immediate charge; and during that time excellent work has there been accomplished. In the second place, its initiation was made possible to a large extent by the generosity of Mrs. E. H. Harriman; and I should like to call the attention of the women of America to the fact that many opportunities still exist in their country for promoting national progress through the agency of eugenics; for none of the institutions concerned is too wealthy.
-- What is Eugenics?, by Leonard Darwin
The Eugenics Record Office (ERO), located in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, United States, was a research institute that gathered biological and social information about the American population, serving as a center for eugenics and human heredity research from 1910 to 1939. It was established by the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Station for Experimental Evolution, and subsequently administered by its Department of Genetics.[1]
Both its founder, Charles Benedict Davenport, and its director, Harry H. Laughlin, were major contributors to the field of eugenics in the United States. Its mission was to collect substantial information on the ancestry of the American population, to produce propaganda that was made to fuel the eugenics movement, and to promote of the idea of race-betterment.
History
The eugenics movement was popular and viewed as progressive in the early-twentieth-century United States.[2] Charles Davenport was one of the leaders of this campaign and avidly believed that it was necessary to apply Mendelian Genetics principles to humans. Davenport's wife, Gertrude Davenport, was also an important figure in this movement and the establishment of the ERO.[3] Gertrude Davenport was an embryologist and a geneticist who wrote papers with her husband supporting the idea that Mendelian genetics theories applied to humans.
Supported by the argument that the eugenics office would collect information for human genetics research, Davenport convinced the Carnegie Institute to establish the ERO.[4] He was well connected to wealthy people during the time and he lobbied them to finance his vision of the ERO. The ERO was financed primarily by Mary Harriman (widow of railroad baron E. H. Harriman),[5] the Rockefeller family, and then the Carnegie Institution until 1939. In 1935 the Carnegie Institution sent a team to review the ERO's work, and as a result the ERO was ordered to stop all work. In 1939 the Carnegie Institution's new President, Vannevar Bush, forced Laughlin's retirement and withdrew funding for the ERO entirely, leading to its closure at the end of that year.[6]
Superintendent Harry H. Laughlin, formerly a school superintendent in Iowa, held a position akin to that of an assistant director of the ERO. Charles Davenport appointed Laughlin as a head of the ERO due to Laughlin's extensive knowledge about breeding and the implementation of this knowledge in humans.[7] Under the direction of Laughlin, the ERO advocated laws that led to the forced sterilization of many Americans it categorized as 'socially inadequate'.[8]
The endeavors of the Eugenics Record Office were facilitated by the work of various committees. The Committee on Inheritance of Mental Traits included among its members Robert M. Yerkes and Edward L. Thorndike.[9] The Committee on Heredity of Deafmutism included Alexander Graham Bell. Harry H. Laughlin was on the Committee on Sterilization, and the Committee on the Heredity of the Feeble Minded included, among others, Henry Herbert Goddard. Other prominent board members included scientists like Irving Fisher, William E. Castle, and Adolf Meyer.
In the 1920s, the ERO merged with the Station for Experimental Evolution and adopted the name of the Department of Genetics of the Carnegie Institute.[10]
Eventually, the ERO closed on December 1939 in part due to the disapproval it received. The information that had been collected by the ERO was distributed amongst other genetic research based organizations and collections services.[1]
The ERO's reports, articles, charts, and pedigrees were considered scientific facts in their day, but have since been discredited. In 1944 its records were transferred to the Charles Fremont Dight Institute for the Promotion of Human Genetics at the University of Minnesota. When the Dight Institute closed in 1991, the genealogical material was filmed by the Genealogical Society of Utah and given to the Center for Human Genetics. The non-genealogical material was not filmed and was given to the American Philosophical Society Library. The American Philosophical Society has a copy of the microfilm as well. Today, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory maintains the full historical records, communications and artifacts of the ERO for historical,[11] teaching and research purposes. The documents are housed in a campus archived and can be accessed online[12] and in a series of multimedia websites.[13]
Methods
The ERO collected research mostly through questionnaires. These questionnaires asked questions which described the characteristics of individual people and their families. These characteristics ranged from physical to temperamental properties. Many of these questionnaires were collected by field workers, usually educated women (who had few other jobs open to them), who would go door-to-door asking people to fill out this information. Many of these women had bachelor's degrees in biology, and graduate school degrees were not uncommon.[14] Additionally, the ERO had other methods of collecting these questionnaires such as sending them through the mail, and promoting them as methods for families to learn about their genetic lineage and family history.[1]
The research collected by these field workers provided much of the information which facilitated the passage of several laws during the 1920s.[1]
The ERO disseminated its information and its message via a variety of outlets. These included a journal called Eugenical News, posters with propaganda full messages about intelligent breeding, and pamphlets with information on the movement.[10]
Controversy
Eugenics was and continues to be a controversial issue due to the pressure radical eugenicists put on the government to pass legislation that would restrict the liberties of the people who had traits that could be considered undesirable.[1] Specifically, the ERO dedicated its resources to the restriction of immigrants and the forced sterilization of individuals with undesirable characteristics. They promoted their ideas through the distribution of propaganda that came in the form of images and information packets.
Something else that caused tension within and surrounding the ERO was Harry H. Laughlin's radical policy suggestions. He was known for presenting fraudulent evidence to support policies of forced sterilization and was known for dogmatism. Furthermore, the rise of Nazism in the 1930s and their use of and belief in eugenics led to opposition to the American program. The ERO finally being closed in 1939.[15]
References
1. Tom. "Eugenics Record Office - Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory - Library & Archives". library.cshl.edu. Retrieved 2017-04-21.
2. "Haunted Files: The Eugenics Record Office (October 3, 2014 – March 13, 2015) – Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU". apa.nyu.edu. Retrieved 2017-04-21.
3. "The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (1910-1939) | The Embryo Project Encyclopedia". embryo.asu.edu. Retrieved 2017-04-21.
4. Allen, Garland E. (1986-01-01). "The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, 1910-1940: An Essay in Institutional History". Osiris. 2: 225–264. doi:10.1086/368657. JSTOR 301835. PMID 11621591.
5. Comfort, Nathaniel C. (2009-06-30). The Tangled Field: Barbara... ISBN 9780674029828. Retrieved 2011-02-03.
6. See Jan A. Witkowski, "Charles Benedict Davenport, 1866-1944," in Jan A. Witkowski and John R. Inglis, eds., Davenport’s Dream: 21st Century Reflections on Heredity and Eugenics (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2008), p. 52.
7. "The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (1910-1939) | The Embryo Project Encyclopedia". embryo.asu.edu. Retrieved 2017-04-21.
8. Wilson, Philip K (2002). "Harry Laughlin's eugenic crusade to control the 'socially inadequate' in Progressive Era America". Patterns of Prejudice. 36 (1): 49–67. doi:10.1080/003132202128811367. ISSN 0031-322X.
9. Zenderland, Leila (2001), Measuring Minds: Henry Herbert Goddard and the Origins of American Intelligence Testing, New York: Cambridge University Press, p. 164.
10. Office, Eugenics Record (2000-09-01). "Eugenics Record Office Records". Retrieved 2017-04-21.
11. See Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (Alfred A. Knopf, 1985); Elof A. Carlson: The Unfit: The History of a Bad Idea (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2001); Jan A. Witkowski and John R. Inglis, eds., Davenport’s Dream: 21st Century Reflections on Heredity and Eugenics (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2008)
12. CSHL Archives general search: “eugenics” [1] Carnegie Institution of Washington Eugenics Record Office Collection: [2]Charles B. Davenport Collection: [3] The study of human heredity; Methods of collecting, charting, and analyzing data: [4]The Eugenics Record Office at the end of twenty-seven months work: [5]
13. DNALC web pages on Eugenics: [6]; DNALC Image Archives on the Eugenics Movement: [7]; [8]; DNALC Chronicle of eugenics: [9];
14. "The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (1910-1939) | The Embryo Project Encyclopedia". embryo.asu.edu. Retrieved 2017-04-21.
15. "EugenicsArchive". http://www.eugenicsarchive.org. Retrieved 2017-04-21.
Further reading
• Black, Edwin (2003). War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race. New York; London: Four Walls Eight Windows. ISBN 1-56858-258-7.
• Karier, Clarence J, "Testing for Order and Control in the Corporate Liberal State", in Karier, CJ; Violas, P; Spring, J (eds.), Roots of Crisis: American Education in the Twentieth Century, pp. 108–37 [112].
• Kevles, Daniel J (2001), In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity, Cambridge, MA, US: Harvard University Press.
External links
• Eugenics Archive – features much material from the ERO archives.
• Eugenics Records Office (finding aid), American Philosophical Society Library.
• ERO (index), American Philosophical Society Library, archived from the original on 2004-10-12, retrieved 2004-10-21.
*************************************
Eugenics Record Office
by Archives at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Accessed: 3/29/20
This collection was generated by the Eugenics Record Office which was created as a department of the Carnegie Institution of Washington Station (CIW) for Experimental Evolution at Cold Spring Harbor New York. The Carnegie Institution of Washington engaged in research in biology from 1904 using a tract of about 9 acres leased for 50 years from the Wawepex [Wauwepex] Society in Cold Spring Harbor NY. With Charles Davenport as the Director, a laboratory was built and the “station” opened in June 1904; it was named “Station for Experimental Evolution” (SEE) in 1906. [url]In 1910, with funding from Mrs. E. H. Harriman, an 80 acre farm near the SEE was purchased, and an office building was erected to establish [url=http://survivorbb.rapeutation.com/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=4123&start=253]the Eugenics Record Office (ERO)[/url][/url]. In 1918, Mrs. Harriman transferred the farm and building to CIW along with an endowment for its maintenance. In 1921 the SEE and ERO were combined into the CIW Department of Genetics with Charles Davenport as the Director. After Charles Davenport retired in 1934, Dr. Albert Blakeslee served as Director of the CIW Department of Genetics until 1941 when Milislav Demerec was named Director. The ERO closed in December 1939 and materials including the collection of forms containing hereditary and genealogical information records were put into storage. At this point the name of the ERO was changed to Genetics Record Office. In 1948 the records from the Eugenics Record Office were donated to the University of Minnesota for use by the Dight Institute of Human Genetics. That material was ultimately dispersed amongst three institutions: the American Philosophical Society, Jackson Laboratories and The Genealogical Society of Utah.
The ERO was devoted to the collection and analysis of American family genetic and traits history records. These eugenics studies collected information such as inborn physical, mental and temperamental properties to enable the family to trace the segregation and recombination of inborn or heritable qualities. The family study files include individual analysis cards, field worker reports, pedigree charts, and special trait studies. Davenport was president of the American Society of Zoologists and in 1910 he founded the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, and appointed Harry H. Laughlin to direct it. H. H. Laughlin became a spokesman for the programmatic side of the previous eugenics movement, lobbying for eugenic legislation to restrict immigration and sterilize "defectives," educating the public on eugenic health, and disseminating eugenic ideas widely. The Record Office formally came under the aegis of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1918.