Authors: Edwin Black
Two race hatred fanatics, Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard, achieved leadership roles within the organization. Grant was internationally known for his bestseller,
The Passing of the Great Race,
which promoted Nordic whites as the superior race. Grant’s book, revered by eugenicists, lamented that America had been infested by “a large and increasing number of the weak, the broken and the mentally crippled of all races drawn from the lowest stratum of the Mediterranean basin and the Balkans, together with hordes of the wretched, submerged populations of the Polish Ghetto.” Grant called these “human flotsam.” Among America’s genetic enemies, Grant singled out Irishmen, whom he insisted “were of no social importance.” As a eugenic remedy, he preached: “A rigid system of selection through the elimination of those who are weak or unfit-in other words, social failures-would solve the whole question in a century…. “ Grant held numerous leadership roles in the Eugenics Research Association, including its presidency, and ultimately sat with Davenport on the three-man executive committee
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Stoddard would write an equally belligerent bestseller, published by Scribner’s, entitled
The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy.
Harvard-educated Stoddard defiantly summarized his science in these words: “You cannot make bad stock into good … any more than you can turn a cart-horse into a hunter by putting it into a fine stable, or make a mongrel into a fine dog by teaching it tricks.” He urged widespread segregation and immigration restrictions to combat the unfit races, which Stoddard compared to infectious bacteria. “Just as we isolate bacterial invasions and starve out the bacteria by limiting the area and amount of their food-supply, so we can compel an inferior race to remain in its native habitat … [which will] as with all organisms, eventually limit … its influence.” Stoddard was one of the early members of the Eugenics Research Association, joining in response to the association’s official invitation.
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The ranks of the ERA included eugenic activists of all sorts, but of the fifty-one original members, none was more enigmatic than charter member #14. His name was Dr. Edwin Katzen-Ellenbogen.
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Dr. Katzen-Ellenbogen had distinguished himself in the field of psychology, mostly though his work with epileptics. In the years just prior to his charter membership, Katzen-Ellenbogen served as the director of the Psychopathological Laboratory at New Jersey’s State Village for Epileptics at Skillman. Before that he had been an assistant physician at Danvers Hospital in Massachusetts, as well as a clinical assistant at a medical school in New York and a lecturer in abnormal psychology at Harvard. Just a year before joining the ERA, he had presented a paper on the mental capacity of epileptics before the National Association for the Study of Epilepsy at Goddard’s Vineland Training School for Feeble-minded Girls and Boys in New Jersey. He was considered an up-and-coming talent. Although just twenty-seven years of age, Katzen-Ellenbogen was listed as a leading psychologist in the distinguished biographical volume,
American Men of Science.
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Who was Katzen-Ellenbogen, really? He spelled his last name numerous ways, hyphenated and unhyphenated. He was an American citizen, but he was actually born in Stanislawow, in Austrian-occupied Poland; he immigrated to the United States in 1905. He settled in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Shortly after arriving in Fitchburg, the twenty-four-year-old Katzen-Ellenbogen married Marie A. Pierce, an American woman six years his junior. Two months later, he traveled to Paris for further studies, but returned to the U.S. in 1907 when he was naturalized. He boasted credentials from Harvard and was a member of that university’s postgraduate teaching staff, but he had actually received his primary education in Poland and his secondary schooling in Germany. He assumed the middle name “Maria,” perhaps after his wife’s name, but his real middle name was Wladyslaw. He claimed to be Roman Catholic, but was actually Jewish.
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Long-skulled, with bushy eyebrows, a thin mustache and a semicircular receding hairline topped by a very high brow, Katzen-Ellenbogen’s head seemed almost too large for his body. As one who had worked with epileptics, disturbed children and the insane, Katzen-Ellenbogen had become accustomed to tinkering with the extremes of human frailty and the limits of will. He was attracted to the mysteries of the mind, but was convinced that the field of psychology was still in its infancy as it probed those mysteries. “Psychology is a discipline of undue hopes and uncritical skepticism,” he wrote, adding, “It has been a hard battle, which in forty years time has elevated psychology from a cinderella science domiciled in one room at the Leipzig University to palace-like institutions, such as for instance the Harvard Psychological Institute…. “
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In 1915, two years after he joined the Eugenics Research Association, Katzen-Ellenbogen sailed again to Europe. He would never return to America. He traveled first to Russia, but ended up in Germany. By then, Europe was embroiled in a bloody World War. But Katzen-Ellenbogen remained an “active member” of the organization even while abroad. Then America entered the war against Germany, and on March 21,1918, the association’s executive committee dropped Katzen-Ellenbogen from its rolls.
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Katzen-Ellenbogen studied troubled minds but was also familiar with intense personal pain and the fire of his own considerable mental anguish. In 1920, his only son, still in America, fell from a roof garden and was killed. The boy’s death destroyed Katzen-Ellenbogen’s sense of personal existence. There would be no male heir to carry on his bloodline, which contradicted the central aspiration of eugenics. But beyond any tenet of science, the untimely death would haunt Katzen-Ellenbogen for the rest of his life. He was in Europe when it occurred, yet he did not return for the funeral. The doctor’s wife slid into profound depression. Katzen-Ellenbogen never forgave himself for staying away. Suicidal impulses would grip him for years.
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Bitter but also philosophical, purely scientific yet overwhelmingly ambitious, Katzen-Ellenbogen wandered from mental place to mental place. He emerged with the disconnected sense of a man with nothing to lose. Abortionist, drug peddler, informer, medical theorist, murderer-Katzen-Ellenbogen eventually drifted into all of these realms.
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This American eugenicist would disappear from America, but his biological vision of humanity would eventually shock the world. Nor would he be alone in his crimes.
* * *
Eugenics found allies not just among the nation’s learned men, but also among the affluent and influential.
In
1912, shortly before the Eugenics Record Office installed its board of scientific directors, the New York State legislature had created the Rockefeller Foundation, which boasted fabulous assets. John D. Rockefeller donated $35 million the first year, and $65 million more the next year.
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Davenport was keen to funnel Rockefeller’s money into eugenics. As he had done with Mrs. Harriman, Davenport cultivated a personal connection with Rockefeller’s son, John D. Rockefeller Jr. The younger Rockefeller controlled the foundation’s millions.
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Shy and intensely private, the oil heir seemed to enjoy corresponding with Davenport about sundry eugenic topics. On January 27, 1912, using his personal 26 Broadway stationery, the young Rockefeller wrote Davenport a letter about a plan to incarcerate feebleminded criminal women for an extra length of time, so they “would … be kept from perpetuating [their] kind … until after the period of child bearing had been passed.” Two months later, Rockefeller Jr. sent Davenport a copy of a
Good Housekeeping
article referencing Pearson and British eugenicists. Rockefeller asked, “Will you be good enough to return the article with your reply, which I shall greatly appreciate.” On April 2, Rockefeller sent Davenport a formal thank you for answering a letter just received. About a month later, Rockefeller sent another note of personal thanks, this time for answering questions about the
Good Housekeeping
article.
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At its first meeting, the ERO’s board of scientific directors “voted to recommend to Mr. John D. Rockefeller the support of the following investigations.” The ERO’s board, chaired by William Welch (who doubled as Rockefeller’s own scientific director), compiled a short list: first, “an analysis of feeblemindedness”; second, “a study of a center of heavy incidence of insanity in Worcester County, Massachusetts”; third, a well-financed “preliminary study of the sources of the better and the poorer strains of immigrants” to be conducted overseas. They also petitioned Rockefeller to fund a statistician who would compile the data.
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Welch found his work with the ERO satisfying, and did not mind becoming vice-chairman when Alexander Graham Bell was appointed to the top post. Two years after Welch joined the board of scientific directors, Davenport used the connection to secure additional Rockefeller financial support. On March 1, 1915, Davenport told Welch, “It seems to me a favorable time to approach the Rockefeller Foundation on the subject of giving a fund for investment to the Eugenics Record Office.” Davenport skillfully played Mrs. Harriman’s wealth against Rockefeller’s vastly superior fortune. To date, Rockefeller’s foundation had “given us $6,000 a year, whereas Mrs. Harriman has given us $25,000” as well as funds for construction and other general expenses. Davenport’s new plan called for an annual investment fund, as well as money to establish a better indexing operation to link surnames, traits and geographic locales. After adding up the columns, itemizing the projects and totaling the results, Davenport wrote Welch, “I would suggest that we should ask for $600,000 [$10.1 million in modem money] from the Rockefeller Foundation.”
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If Rockefeller agreed to the $600,000 subvention, Davenport planned to go back to Mrs. Harriman and ask her to go one better. “We should then ask Mrs. Harriman to consider an endowment of $800,000 to $1 million.” That would almost double her annual tithe.
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As expected, Davenport lunched with Mrs. Harriman just days later. Their discussion was fruitful. “She is, I understand, ready to tum over some property to [the Eugenics Record Office],” Davenport happily reported to Bell. Mrs. Harriman’s financial support would ultimately grow to hundreds of thousands of dollars
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Big money made all the difference for eugenics. Indeed, biological supremacy, raceology and coercive eugenic battle plans were all just talk until those ideas married into American affluence. With that affluence came the means and the connections to make eugenic theory an administrative reality.
Providing her opulent 1 East Sixty-ninth Street home as a meeting place, Mrs. Harriman bestowed her prestige as well as her wealth on the eugenic crusade. At one meeting in her home on April 8, 1914, more than a dozen experts gathered to plan action against those considered feebleminded. Most offered short presentations. Goddard, fresh from his intelligence-testing accomplishments, began the meeting with a proposed definition of “feebleminded.” Another outlined ideas on “segregation of the feebleminded.” A third offered “new and needed legislation in re: the feebleminded.” Laughlin presented a fifteen-minute talk on “sterilization of the feebleminded. “ Davenport spoke on county surveys of the feebleminded.
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Mrs. Harriman wielded great power. \Vhen she made a request of New York State officials, it was difficult for them to say no. Davenport’s proposed county surveys in search of the unfit, for example, were implemented by state officials. Eugenic agencies were established, often bearing innocuous names. Robert Hebberd, secretary of the New York State Board of Charities, reported to Mrs. Harriman that “our Eugenics Bureau is known officially as the Bureau of Analysis and Investigation.”
In
describing the agency’s work, Hebberd’s letter reflected the usual eugenic parlance, “The study of groups of defective individuals is so closely related to the welfare of future generations that the lessons drawn from the histories of abnormal families … [can] prevent the continuance of conditions which foster social evils.” He added that to this end, the records of some 300,000 people had already been tabulated in twenty-four of New York State’s counties. Hebberd promised to coordinate his agency’s work with privately financed eugenic field surveys “in Rockland County, under your direction.” He deferentially added, “Permit me to say that it is gratifying to know of your deep interest in this branch of the work of the State Board of Charities.”
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Rockefeller also financed private county surveys. His foundation would cover the $10,000 cost of a hunt for the unfit in New York’s Nassau County. Davenport and several Nassau County appointees formed an impromptu “Committee on the Enumeration of Mental Defectives,” which worked closely with local school authorities in search of inferior students. Eight field workers would assist the search.
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Some ordinary New York State agencies changed their focuses from benign to eugenic. One such agency operated under the innocuous-sounding name of the Bureau of Industries and Immigration. Originally established to protect disadvantaged immigrants, the bureau began employing investigators to identify “defectives,” the feebleminded and the insane. One typical report on fifteen feebleminded newcomers began with Case #258, which focused on Teresa Owen, a forty-year-old woman from Ireland who was classified as insane. The case note on Owen read, “Has been released to her husband and is cohabiting with him, with what disastrous results to posterity … no one can foretell. She is a menace … [and] should be removed and segregated pending removal.” Case #430 treated Eva Stypanovitz, an eighteen-year-old Russian Jew who was classified as feebleminded. The file on Stypanovitz noted, “Case diagnosed by relatives. Is of marriageable age, and a menace to the community.” Case #918 dealt with Vittorio Castellino, a thirty-five-year-old from Italy, and recorded, “Such a case cannot be too extravagantly condemned from a eugenic and economic point ofview.”
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