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A Decade of Progress in Eugenics; Scientific Papers of the Third International Congress of Eugenics, Held at American Musuem of Natural History, New ... F. Perkins, Chairman ... Harry H. Laughlin, S
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Duration of the Several Mitotic Stages in the Dividing Root-Tip Cells of the Common Onion
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Eugenical Sterilization in the United States (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Eugenical Sterilization in the United States...)
Excerpt from Eugenical Sterilization in the United States
Dr. Harry H. Laughlin, Eugenics Associate of the Psychopathic Laboratory of the Municipal Court of Chicago, and Eugenics Director of Carnegie Institution of Washington, Cold Springs Harbor, N. Y., has rendered the nation a signal service in the preparation of this work, "Eugenical Sterilization in the United States."
Since the rediscovery of Mendel's Law of Heredity and the recent advances made by the biologists and psychopathologists in respect to the causes of mental and physical defects in the human race, with the consequent revelation of the great role played by heredity as a producing cause, the science of eugenics has become of vital importance.
"Eugenics," says Professor Irving Fisher, "stands against the forces which work for racial deterioration, and for improvement and vigor, intelligence and moral fiber of the human race. It represents the highest form of patriotism and humanitarianism. while at the same time it offers immediate advantages to ourselves and to our children. By eugenic measures, for instance, our burden of taxes can be reduced by decreasing the number of degenerates, delinquents and defectives supported in public institutions; such measures will also increase safeguards against crimes committed against our persons or our property."
America, in particular, needs to protect herself against indiscriminate immigration, criminal degenerates, and race suicide.
The success of democracy depends upon the quality of its individual elements. If in these elements the racial values arc high, government will be equal to all the economic, educational, religious and scientific demands of the times. If, on the contrary, there is a constant and progressive racial degeneracy, it is only a question of time when popular self-government will be impossible, and will be succeeded by chaos, and finally a dictatorship.
Dr. Laughlin is well qualified for the work he…
Harry Hamilton Laughlin was an American eugenist and propagandist. He was the Superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office from 1910 to its closing in 1939.
Background
Harry Hamilton Laughlin was born in Oskaloosa, Iowa, United States, the fourth of five sons and eighth of ten children of George Hamilton Laughlin and Deborah Jane (Ross) Laughlin. His father, a native of Quincy, Illinois, was a schoolteacher and a minister of the Disciples of Christ. After serving as president of Oskaloosa College and then of Hiram College in Ohio (1883 - 1887), he moved his family briefly to Kansas and in 1891 to Kirksville, Missouri, where he served as minister of the local Christian church and, from 1892 until his death in 1895, taught English at the Kirksville State Normal School (later Northeast Missouri State College). Although his four brothers became osteopaths, Harry at first followed in his father's footsteps as a small-town educator.
Education
He graduated from the Kirksville normal school in 1900 with a B. S. degree in science education. He enrolled in the graduate biology program at Princeton University in 1915, receiving an M. S. degree in 1916 and a D. Sc. in 1917. In 1936 he received an honorary M. D. degree from the University of Heidelberg, then under Nazi control.
Career
In 1902 Laughlin accepted a high school principalship in Centerville, Iowa, but returned to Kirksville in 1905 as superintendent of schools. Two years later he joined the faculty of the normal school, where he taught agriculture and nature study. An interest in agricultural breeding led Laughlin to initiate a correspondence in 1907 with Charles B. Davenport, director of the Carnegie Institution's Station for Experimental Evolution at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. Three years later, when improvement of human breeding usurped Davenport's interests, he persuaded wealthy acquaintances to found a Eugenics Record Office and chose Laughlin as its superintendent. There Laughlin remained for the rest of his career.
Davenport and Laughlin commanded the resources to make Cold Spring Harbor the center for major advances in the study of human genetics, but for such an undertaking Laughlin was totally unfitted by background and temperament. Even after his studies at Princeton University, he did no important scientific work. His extreme racist beliefs and strongly hereditarian views of human nature colored all his undertakings. A humorless and dogmatic investigator, he assembled data chiefly to support eugenics programs, a goal which came increasingly to concern Davenport as well.
In 1913 a Eugenics Research Association was founded at Cold Spring Harbor, the only national organization that brought together scientists interested in human heredity; Laughlin served as its secretary-treasurer after 1917. In 1916 he and Davenport began editing Eugenical News as a clearinghouse for news of activities in this field. Soon after coming to Cold Spring Harbor, Laughlin became deeply involved in a movement to pass state laws for sexual sterilization of "hereditary defectives, " in which category he included tramps, beggars, alcoholics, criminals, the feebleminded, the insane, epileptics, the physically deformed, the blind, and the deaf. (Laughlin himself had epilepsy and, although happily married, remained childless. ) He served on committees that advocated sterilization and published three exhaustive reports dealing with the issue.
He was also among the leaders of the American Eugenics Society, founded in the early 1920's to educate the public concerning eugenic goals. Through these many activities, Laughlin was at the center of the eugenics movement, had contacts with many leading scientists, and knew such nativist popularizers of science as Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard.
By the 1920's Laughlin's main interests were race and immigration restriction. In June 1920, testifying before the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, he expressed his concern that immigrants, especially the newer immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, were contributing disproportionately to the hereditary crime, insanity, and feeblemindedness that threatened the quality of American stock. The committee chairman, Albert Johnson, was impressed and appointed Laughlin the committee's expert eugenics agent. Laughlin continued his studies, including trips abroad, and appeared several times before the committee with masses of graphs and charts to demonstrate the threat posed by immigrants from inferior stock. He had got the international reputation as an expounder of racist doctrines. By this time, Laughlin had become an embarrassment to the Carnegie Institution, as well as to some of the new leaders in the eugenics movement.
Davenport retired in 1934, and thereafter Laughlin's position at Cold Spring Harbor became increasingly untenable. By the end of 1939 the Eugenics Record Office had been phased out and Laughlin had been eased into early retirement. He and his wife returned to Kirksville, Missouri, where at the age of sixty-two he died of a coronary thrombosis. He was buried near his parents in Highland Park Cemetery, Kirksville.
Achievements
Laughlin was among the most active individuals in influencing American eugenics policy, especially compulsory sterilization legislation. Under his direction, the Eugenics Record Office trained field workers in collecting and analyzing human pedigrees and published many works on human heredity. He was one of many persons with scientific credentials who lent support to the racial doctrines that underlay the immigration restriction legislation of the 1920's.
