1913 — The Stewards of Human Evolution

Dr. Davenport, the head Eugenics "researcher" at Cold Springs Harbor makes the case for guiding human evolution and dispells myths that "there is anything freakish about eugenics."

In fact, he jovially insists that "we scientists don't do any experiments in eugenics, the human race does plenty of that!"

The scariest part though, is how the New York Times buys into it and makes him seem...well, normal.

Some fun quotes:

The idea that there is anything freakish about eugenics is quite mistaken. We not only do not perform experiments, but we don't try to establish any scientific system of mating by which someone shall say "now A must marry B and breed certain kinds of children. That idea, as I say is all wrong. The eugenist is simply a sane, sensible well balanced person who works, sanely for the betterment of the race.

The eugenics movement is not attempting to "banish love"... The eugenics idea has never gone further, Mrs Davenport declared emphatically, "than to urge that the human bloodlines be relieved of the worst things, that these worst lines be cut off as much as possible."

Another blank [on the registration form] is concerned with special traits or peculiarities of any sort, a fourth with the inheritance of a tendency toward tuberculosis, and still another with the presence in the "family tree" of cleft palate or hare lip. Thousands of such records are already filed and indexed in the offices at Cold Spring Harbor...."It is hoped that it will in time come to be generally regarded as a social duty to record and deposit in the vaults of the Eugenics Record Office data concerning the hereditary traits of one's family..."

"In our country we have nearly pure races in certain islands off the coast of Maine and in certain long-settled valleys with a highly inbred population, characterized in come cases by alcoholism, indolence and strong sexuality and in other cases by exceptional good manners and effectiveness."

Just as we have strains of scholars, of miltary men, of lazy sots so too we have strains of paupers or sex offenders, of feeble minded or other sorts; strains with epilepsy, strains with strong tendencies toward larceny, assault, lying, running away, strains with a lack of resistance to tuberculosis, to cancer, to excessive nervous stress...

We are told that the number of the socially inadequate is rapidly increasing and it is probably true. And the cause is not far to seek. Modern philanthropy and medicine have cooperated not only to keep alive the personas who show the undesirable traits of the non-social strains but to facilitate their reproduction...Dr. Davenport and the eugenists of course favor the segregation and in many cases the sterilization of the feeble-minded and "socially inadequate" We have in Illinois, New Jersey and several other states -although not in New York- sterilization laws by which a board of scientific judges may compel the asexualization of persons whom they find unfit to bear sane or healthy children...But it is a fairly well-known fact that such laws are not fully enforced...

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