Eugenics and migration in USA, 1882-1924

The High Tide of Immigration - A National Menace 

by Louis Dalrymple 

in Judge magazine, Aug 1903 

The term eugenics came from English scientist Sir Francis Galton. In Hereditary Gen­ius (1869), Galton advocated a sel­ective breeding programme in humans, to ensure that quality genes were passed down. His theories inspired prominent US biologist Charles Davenport to es­t­ablish the Eugenics Record Office NY in 1910.

Eugen­ics became a U.S programme to improve the genetic quality of humans. Since the early propon­ents believed that only through sel­ect­ive breeding could humans direct their own evol­ution, I’d been very inter­ested in eugenics’ effect on forced sterilisation. Now examine the movement’s im­pact on immigration into America. 

Between 1850-1930, the US accepted c5 million Germans, 3.5 million British, 4.5 million Irish and 2.8 million Eastern Eur­o­pean Jews. In fact 1.3 million migrants passed through Ellis Island in 1907 alone. Americans believed a] in the genetic superiority of Nor­­d­ic, Germanic and Anglo-Saxon peop­les, as opposed to Asian, Af­r­ic­an or Eastern European citizens. And they believed b] that the US had rarely suff­ered from crime or disease before those Undesirable Migrants arrived. The famous melting-pot concept was fake! 

In 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, then renewed it twice. By excluding all Chinese labourers from entering the U.S, this Exclusion Act largely achieved its goal.

The Immigration Restriction League was the first American body officially promoting eugenics. Created by Harvard Univ­ersity graduates in 1894, the League sought to bar inferior races from ent­ering America, diluting the superior American rac­ial stock. Social and sexual involve­ment with less evol­ved races would pose a biolog­ical threat to real Americans. 

The American Breeder’s Association/ABA (1906) was the first eugenic body in the US, led by Char­l­es Davenport. It was formed to investigate and report on heredity, to emphasise the value of su­p­erior blood and the menace of inferior blood. The Am­er­ican Association for the Study and Prev­ention of In­fant Mortality, from 1909 on, in­vest­igated infant mortality in terms of eugen­ics. They pushed for government intervention, to promote the health of future citizens. The American Breeder’s Assoc­iat­ion est­ab­lished a Committee on Imm­igration Legislat­ion com­mittee in 1911. 

As a result, eugenicists wanted to build a wall around the U.S high enough to keep out polluting peoples. The true, old-stock Americans were seen to be an endangered species! 

Immigrants outside an Ellis Island building, c1900. 

Smithsonian Institute, National Archives 

The Rest­riction League lobbied for a liter­acy test for immigrants, since lit­eracy rates were low among inferior races. By using intel­l­igence testing, eugenicists asserted that middleclass stat­us was a marker of superior status, ind­icative of genetic fit­ness. This re­affirmed the existing cl­ass and rac­ial hierarchies; those deemed un­fit were largely of the lower classes i.e dirty migrants.

At first Davenport favoured restrict­ion of feeble-minded immigrants and sterilis­ation as prim­ary meth­ods. But soon he was caught up in a racialist whirlwind initiated by Madison Grant’s book The Passing of the Great Race. Combining dodgy history, anthropology and genet­ic theory, Grant’s work persuaded Davenport that pure American blood­­ was threatened by entire ethnic groups. The Passing of the Great Race savagely denigrated the peoples of eastern and southern Europe while exalting the Nordics of N.W Europe. 

Davenport also founded The Eugenics Record Office, supported by psychol­ogists Henry Goddard & Harry Laughlin. Founded in Cold Spring Harbour NY in 1911, using corporate money from the Harriman rail roads, Rockefeller Foundation and Carnegie Institut­ion, they collected fam­ily pedigrees! Harriman money was given to local charities, in order to find immigrants from specific ethnic groups to deport, confine or sterilise. 

Immigrant children examined by city health officer at Ellis Island 

during Typhus Scare. New York, 1911. 

The Correspondent

Compare this to Australia, the nation that warmly embraced the obnoxious White Australia Policy in 1913. Many Australians clearly had negative attitudes to those not of British extraction, incl­ Indigenous Australians.

Before WW1 a network of scientists and reformers actively promoted eug­en­ic legislation and projects. c19 million people attended the 1915 Pan­ama–Pacific Inter­national Exposition in San Francisco. This Expos­it­ion extolled this rapidly pro­g­ressing nation, featuring new developments in science, agricul­t­ure, manuf­act­uring, technol­ogy, health care and race bett­er­ment. 

There WERE some scientific critics, most focusing on eugenicists’ methodology, which defined every human charact­eristic as genetic, never environment­al. Yet there were 376 separate courses the US’s leading universities which included eugen­ics in the curriculum. 

Even feminists advocated reforms eg Nat­ion­al Federation of Women’s Clubs; Woman’s Ch­ristian Temperance Un­ion; National League of Women Voters. Birth control heroine Margaret Sang­er believ­ed birth cont­rol could prevent un­wanted bab­ies from being born into a miser­able life. Eug­enicists rec­ognised the polit­ic­al and social influence of women in the Deep South between 1915-20, and used it. 

Influential eugenicist witnesses for the House Committee on Immig­ration and Nat­uralisation in 1920 argued that the national gene pool would be polluted if undesirable migrant numbers contin­ued. This caused the U.S to pass laws creating a hierarchy of national­ities, rating them from the most desirable peoples down to the least. In passing the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924, eugenicists played an important role in the Congressional debate as expert advisers regarding inferior stock from eastern and southern Europe. The Act, based on the racial superiority of old-stock white Americans, strength­en­ed the existing laws for years.

And migrants already in the country could be targeted. Since pov­er­ty was associated with prostitution and mental idiocy, women of the lower classes, immigrants or women of colour were the first to be deemed promiscuous. These women were sterilised or were confined. 

Conclusion 
In the early C20th, the U.S accepted many Southern and Eastern European im­mig­rants, the peo­ple most loathed by Prot­est­ant, white old-time Am­er­icans. So rest­rict­ions on immigration passed during the 1920s were clearly motiv­ated by eugen­ics’ more rac­ist goals. But once migration to the U.S largely ceased in 1924, rub­bishy mig­rants could no longer be blamed for crime and disease in the US. 

You might like to read The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics and the Law,  by Daniel Okrent, 2019