Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell

3 The Pedigree Factory

3 0 In 1865, Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) published the paper on the inherited characteristics of sweet peas that laid the foundation for studying genetics . During his lifetime, however, the German monk’s work went almost entirely unnoticed. Scientists working independently in England, Holland , Germany, and Austria rediscovered Mendel’s seminal paper in 1900.¹ It provided a biologically based scientific model, complete with “laws” of heredity. Those laws became common parlance to people interested in heredity. According to Mendel, people inherited certain characteristics or “traits” from their parents in a predictable pattern. Those traits were passed down as independent units via some physical “determiner” or “factor.” The factors , later named “genes,” were the essence of heredity and in the aggregate made up what came to be called the “germ plasm”—the physical link connecting the generations. Though Mendel’s work involved tracking features of pea plants such as height or the color of their flowers, people who studied humans initially focused on eye color, hair color, and other easily observable traits to analyze the workings of heredity. They talked of the one-toone correspondence between the determiner (or gene) and the “unit character ” (or trait).² Mendel’s theory of inheritance, Francis Galton’s family study methods, and the general passion to eradicate social problems came together in an American institution dedicated to the study of eugenics. In 1910, biologist Charles Benedict Davenport established the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) in Cold Spring Harbor, New York. Davenport was a credentialed member of America’s scientific elite. He earned a Ph.D. at Harvard in 1892, then taught there and at the University of Chicago. He was named director of the Station for the Experimental Study of Evolution, funded by the Carnegie Institute of Washington, in The Pedigree Factory 3 The Pedigree Factory | 3 1 1904. Over his career he held memberships in the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council.³ Davenport began his study of heredity as a disciple and correspondent of Francis Galton in the late 1890s. In 1904 Davenport wrote that “unit characters ” were the “essence of individuals.”⁴ Less than a year before the formal founding of the ERO, Davenport gave a lecture at Yale University that summarized his position on the aims and the format of his brand of eugenics. He proposed a system that would survey family traits. Such a plan would “identify those lines which supply our families of great men.” But studying the great families was only one goal of eugenics; Davenport also urged tracing the origins of “our 300,000 insane and feebleminded, our 160,000 blind or deaf, the 2,000,000 that are annually cared for by our hospitals and Homes, our 80,000 prisoners and thousands of criminals that are not in prison, and our 100,000 paupers in almshouses and out.”⁵ According to Davenport, some 3 to 4 percent of the American population came from these groups, and they represented “a fearful drag on our civilization.” Should we merely stand by to watch philanthropists shower their beneficence on “the delinquent, defective and dependent classes” or even raise the taxes of ordinary Americans to that end? Better to follow the lead of science and work to “dry up the springs that feed the torrent of defective and degenerate protoplasm.” Davenport speculated that research in institutional records and the archives of schools and insurance companies would pave the way for eugenic legislation that would prevent “idiots, low imbeciles, incurable and dangerous criminals” from having children. Preventive methods could include institutional segregation and surgical sterilization. The options for self-protection extended, according to Davenport, even to executing criminals, in order to “annihilate the hideous serpent of hopelessly vicious protoplasm.” Davenport predicted that preventive medicine, guided by eugenic principles , would replace palliative philanthropy.⁶ Eugenic agenda in hand, Davenport successfully approached Mary Harriman , then the recent widow of railroad magnate E. H. Harriman, for funding. Between 1910 and 1918, the Harriman contribution to endow and maintain the Eugenics Record Office reached nearly $650,000. Additional money from the Carnegie Foundation, John D. Rockefeller, and other philanthropists provided substantial support for the research institution that 3 2 | Three Generations, No Imbeciles for nearly thirty years would be a focal point for the eugenics movement in the United States.⁷ The first board of scientific directors of the ERO included an extraordinary array of scientific talent, starting with...