Authors: Edwin Black
On Sunday, June 16 and Monday, June 17, 1935, the advisory committee led by Kidder visited Cold Spring Harbor, touring both the ERO and the adjacent Carnegie Station for Experimental Evolution. Laughlin’s residence, provided by the Carnegie Institution, was one of the buildings in the compound, and Mrs. Laughlin graciously prepared Sunday lunch and Monday dinner for the delegation. The men found her hospitality delightful, and Laughlin’s presentations exhaustive. But after a thorough examination, the advisory committee concluded that the Eugenics Record Office was a worthless endeavor from top to bottom, yielding no real data, and that eugenics itself was not science but rather a social propaganda campaign with no discernible value to the science of either genetics or human heredity.
19
Almost a million ERO records assembled on individuals and families were “unsatisfactory for the scientific study of human genetics,” the advisory committee explained, “because so large a percentage of the questions concern … traits, such as ‘self-respect,’ ‘holding a grudge,’ ‘loyalty,’ [and] ‘sense of humor,’ which can seldom truly be known to anyone outside an individual’s close associates; and which will hardly ever be honestly recorded, even were they measurable, by an associate or by the individual concerned.”
20
While much ERO attention was devoted to meaningless personality traits, key physical traits were being recorded so sloppily by “untrained persons” and “casually interested individuals” that the advisory committee concluded this data was also “relatively worthless for genetic study.” The bottom line: a million index cards, some 35,000 files, and innumerable other records merely occupied “a great amount of the small space available … and, worst of all, they do not appear to us really to permit satisfactory use of the data.”
21
The advisory committee recommended that all genealogical and eugenic tracking activities cease, and that the cards be placed in storage until whatever bits of legitimate heredity data they contained could be properly extracted and analyzed using an IBM punch card system. A million index cards had accumulated during some two decades, but because of the project’s starting date in 1910 and Laughlin’s unscientific methodology, the data had never been analyzed by IBM’s data processing system. This fact only solidified the advisory committee’s conclusion that the Eugenics Record Office was engaged in mere biological gossip backed up by reams of worthless documents. The advisory committee doubted that the demographic muddle would “ever be of value,” and added its hope that “never again … should records be allowed to bank up to such an extent that they cannot be kept currently analyzed.”
22
The advisory committee vigorously urged that “The Eugenics Record Office should engage in no new undertaking; and that all current activities should be discontinued save for Dr. Laughlin’s work in preparation of his final report upon the Race Horse investigation.” Moreover, the advisory committee emphasized, “The Eugenics Record Office should devote its entire energies to pure research divorced from all forms of propaganda and the urging or sponsoring of programs for social reform or race betterment such as sterilization, birth-control, inculcation of race or national consciousness, restriction of immigration, etc. Hence it might be well for the personnel of the Office to discontinue connection with the
Eugenical News.”
Committee members concluded, “Eugenics is by generally accepted definition and understanding not a science.” They insisted that any further involvement with Cold Spring Harbor be devoid of the word
eugenics
and instead gravitate to the word
genetics.
23
Geneticist L. C. Dunn, a member of the advisory committee traveling in Europe at the time, added his opinion in a July 3,1935, letter, openly copied to Laughlin. Dunn was part of a growing school of geneticists demanding a clean break between eugenics and genetics. “With genetics,” advised Dunn, “its relations have always been close, although there have been distinct signs of cleavage in recent years, chiefly due to the feeling on the part of many geneticists that eugenical research was not always activated by purely disinterested scientific motives, but was influenced by social and political considerations tending to bring about too rapid application of incompletely proved theses. In the United States its [the eugenics movement’s] relations with medicine have never been close, the applications having more often been made through sociology than through medicine, although the basic problems involved are biological and medical ones. “
24
Dunn wondered if it wasn’t time to shut down Cold Spring Harbor altogether and move the operation to a university where such an operation could collaborate with other disciplines. “There would seem to me to be no peculiar advantages in the Cold Spring Harbor location.” As it stood, “‘Eugenics’ has come to mean an effort to foster a program of social improvement rather than an effort to discover facts.” In that regard, Dunn made a clear comparison to Nazi excesses. “I have just observed in Germany,” he wrote, “some of the consequences of reversing the order as between program and discovery. The incomplete knowledge of today, much of it based on a theory of the state, which has been influenced by the racial, class and religious prejudices of the group in power, has been embalmed in law, and the avenues to improvement in the techniques of improving the population have been completely closed.”
25
Dunn’s July 3 letter continued with even more pointed comparisons to Nazi Germany. “The genealogical record offices have become powerful agencies of the [German] state,” he wrote, “and medical judgments even when possible, appear to be subservient to political purposes. Apart from the injustices in individual cases, and the loss of personal liberty, the solution of the whole eugenic problem by fiat eliminates any rational solution by free competition of ideas and evidence. Scientific progress in general seems to have a very dark future. Although much of this is due to the dictatorship, it seems to illustrate the dangers which all programs run which are not continually responsive to new knowledge, and should certainly strengthen the resolve which we generally have in the U.S. to keep all agencies which contribute to such questions as free as possible from commitment to fixed programs.”
26
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Carnegie’s advisory committee could not have been more clear: eugenics was a dangerous sham, the ERO was a worthless and expensive undertaking devoid of scientific value, and Laughlin was purely political. But as Hitler rose and the situation of the Jews in Europe worsened, and the plight of refugees seeking entry into the United States became ever more desperate, the Carnegie Institution elected to ignore its own findings about Cold Spring Harbor and continue its economic and political support for Laughlin and his enterprises. Shortly after Merriam reviewed the advisory committee’s conclusions, the Reich passed the Nuremberg Laws in September of 1935. Those of Jewish ancestry were stripped of their civil rights. Laughlin,
Eugenical News
and the Cold Spring Harbor eugenics establishment propagandized that the laws were merely sound science.
Eugenical News
even gave senior Nazi leaders a platform to justify their decrees. The Carnegie Institution still took no action against its Cold Spring Harbor enterprise.
In 1936, the brutal Nazi concentration camps multiplied. Systematic Jewish pauperization accelerated. Jews continued fleeing Germany in terror, seeking entry anywhere. But American consulates refused them visas. In the face of the humanitarian crisis, Laughlin continued to advise the State Department and Congress to enforce stiff eugenic immigration barriers against Jews and other desperate refugees. The Carnegie Institution still took no action against its Cold Spring Harbor enterprise.
27
In 1937, Nazi street violence escalated and Germany increasingly vowed to extend its master race to all of Europe-and to completely cleanse the continent of Jews. Laughlin,
Eugenical News
and the eugenics establishment continued to agitate in support of the Reich’s goals and methods, and even distributed the anti-Semitic Nazi film,
Erbkrank.
The Carnegie Institution still took no action against its Cold Spring Harbor enterprise.
28
In 1938, as hundreds of thousands of new refugees appeared, an emergency intergovernmental conference was convened at Evian, France. It was fruitless. Germany then decreed that all Jewish property was to be registered, a prelude to comprehensive liquidation and seizure. In November,
Kristallnacht
shocked the world. Nazi agitation was now spreading into every country in Europe. Austria had been absorbed into the Reich. Hitler threatened to devour other neighboring countries as well. Laughlin,
Eugenical News
and the eugenics establishment still applauded the Hitler campaign. By the end of 1938, however, the Carnegie Institution realized it could not delay action much longer.
29
On January 4, 1939, newly installed Carnegie president Vannevar Bush put Laughlin on notice that while his salary for the year was assured, Bush was not sure how much funding the ERO would receive-if any. At the same time, Jews from across Europe continued to flee the Continent, many begging to enter America because no other nation would take them. In March of 1939, the Senate Immigration Committee asked Bush if Laughlin could appear for another round of testimony to support restrictive “remedial legislation.” Bush permitted Laughlin to appear, and only asked him to limit his unsupportable scientific assertions. But Laughlin was not prohibited from again promoting eugenic and racial barriers as the best basis for immigration policy. Indeed, the Carnegie president reminded him, “One has to express opinions when he appears in this sort of inquiry, and I believe that yours will be found to be a conservative and well-founded estimate of the situation facing the Committee.” Bush added that he had personally reviewed Laughlin’s prior testimony and felt it was “certainly well handled and valuable.”
30
After testifying, Laughlin received a postcard at the Carnegie Institution in Washington from an irate citizen in Los Angeles. “As an American descendant of Americans for over 3 00 years, I’d like to learn what prompted you to supply [the Senate Immigration Committee] … with so much material straight from Hitler’s original edition of
Mein Kampf.”
31
At about this time, Laughlin was also permitted to testify before the Special Committee on Immigration and Naturalization of the New York State Chamber of Commerce. In May of 1939, Laughlin’s report,
Immigration and Conquest,
was published under the imprimatur of the New York State Chamber of Commerce and “Harry H. Laughlin, Carnegie Institution of Washington.” The 267-page document, filled with raceological tenets, claimed that America would soon suffer “conquest by settlement and reproduction” through an infestation of defective immigrants. As a prime illustration, Laughlin offered “The Parallel Case of the House Rat,” in which he traced rodent infestation from Europe to the rats’ ability “to travel in sailing ships.”
32
Laughlin then explained, in a section entitled “The Jew as an Immigrant into the United States,” that Jews were being afforded too large a quota altogether because they were being improperly considered by their nationality instead of as a distinct racial type. By Laughlin’s calculations, no more than six thousand Jews per year ought to be able to enter the United States under the existing national quota system-the system he helped organize a half-decade earlier-but many more were coming in because they were classified as German or Russian or Polish instead ofJewish. He asked that Jews in the United States “assimilate” properly and prove their “loyalty to the American institutions” was “greater than their loyalty to Jews scattered through other nations.”
Immigration and Conquest’s
precepts were in many ways identical to Nazi principles. Laughlin and the ERO proudly sent a copy to Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick, as well as to other leading Nazis, including Verschuer, Lenz, Ploetz and even Rüdin at a special address care of a university in occupied Czechoslovakia.
33
In late 1938, the Carnegie Institution finally disengaged from
Eugenical News.
The publication became a quarterly completely under the aegis of the American Eugenics Society, published out of AES offices in Manhattan, with a new editorial committee that did not include Laughlin or any other Carnegie scientist. The first issue of the reorganized publication was circulated in March of 1939. Shortly thereafter, the Carnegie Institution formalized Laughlin’s retirement, effective at the end of the year. On September 1, 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland, igniting World War
II.
Highly publicized atrocities against Polish Jews began at once, shocking the world. Efforts by Laughlin in the final months of 1939 to find a new sponsor for the ERO were unsuccessful. On December 31, 1939, Laughlin officially retired. The Eugenics Record Office was permanently closed the same day.
34
Laughlin and his wife immediately moved back to Kirksville, Missouri. The last years of his life were uneventful, and he died in Kirksville on January 26,1943. Davenport eulogized him in
Eugenical News
as a great man whose views were opposed by those of “a different social philosophy which is founded more on sentiment and less on a thorough analysis of the facts.” Davenport saluted his protege, predicting that within a generation Laughlin’s work would be “widely appreciated” for what it really was: “preservation … from the clash of opposing ideals and instincts found in the more diverse racial or geographical groups.”
35
Strangely enough, Laughlin, the staunch defender of strong germ plasm and warrior against the feebleminded and the hereditarily defective, left no children. The family kept it a secret, but the rumor was that Laughlin himself suffered from an inherited disease that made him subject to uncontrollable seizures. These seizures had occasionally occurred in front of his colleagues at the ERO. Laughlin’s condition had been discovered in the 1920s upon his return from Europe. During one episode, Laughlin reportedly drove off the road near Cold Spring Harbor and almost ran into the water. An obstruction stopped his vehicle. Laughlin nearly died that night, and his wife reportedly never allowed him to drive a car again.
36