Revised 4/18/18

Revised 4/18/18

Strange Bedfellows?Eugenics and the

Environmental Movement in the United States,1900-1950

Michael Mizell Lecture

Marine Biological LaboratoryMay 18, 2018

Garland E. AllenWashington University in St. Louis

Conflicting Ideologies?• Eugenics: “The improvement of the human race

by better breeding.”[Charles B. Davenport, Eugenics (New York, Henry Holt,1910: Title page]

• The Environmental Movement:- Conservation: “The collective use and

preservation of forests, waters, soils, and minerals” [Gifford Pinchot, U.S. Forestry Service, 1908]

- Preservation: “In wildness is the preservation of the world.” [Henry David Thoreau, 1851; published posthumously, 1863]

Conservation vs Preservation

Conservation: Gifford Pinchot: The “preservation in unimpaired efficiency of the resources of the earth.” [Richard T. Ely et al, The Foundations of National Prosperity (NY, 1918); Quoted in Samuel Hays, Conservation and the Cult of Efficiency (Pittsburgh, 1959): p. 123]

Preservation: John Muir: Undisturbed Nature, restrictions on even limited commercial use [Eric Rutgow, American Canopy (Scribner, 2012: 145-151]

Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946) John Muir (1838-1914)

OUTLINE• Conservation and Eugenics Movements:

Timeline• The Eugenics Movement• The Early Environmental Movement• Eugenicists as Conservationists:

Madison Grant (1862-1937)• General Conclusions:

- Points of Commonality- Nature as Metaphor for Human Society

Time FrameConservation

1872: Yellowstone Park Act1883: Adirondack Forest Act1886: Audubon Society founded, U.S.

Division of Forestry organized1887: Hatch Act (Agriculture Exp Stns)1892: Sierra Club founded by John Muir1901-09:Theodore Roosevelt, President1905: US Forest Service Formed1908: Roosevelt’s Governors Conference1909-13: 1st of five Nat’l Conservation

Conferences, Gifford Pinchot, Director1913: Hetch-Hetchy Reservoir approved1916: National Park Service organized1918: Migratory Bird Treaty US-Canada;1918: Save the Redwoods League

founded by Madison Grant, H.F. Osborn & John C. Merriam

Eugenics1871: Darwin’s Descent of Man1883: Term coined by Francis Galton1885: Weismann’s Germ Plasm theory1900: Rediscovery of Mendel’s work1904: Station for Experimental Evolution

Evolution, Cold Spring Harbor 1904: American Breeders’ Association1907: 1st Eugenic Sterilization Law

(Indiana); By 1935, 30 stateshad passed such laws

1910: Eugenics Record Office (CSH)1910-1915: Rise of classical genetics1912: H. H. Goddard: The Kallikaks1916: Grant’s Passing of the Great

Race1924: U.S. Immigration Restriction Act1933: Nazi Eugenic Sterilization Law1939: Germany invades Poland

Historical Studies Noting Connection between Eugenics & Conservation

• Ronald Rainger: Agenda for Antiquity: Henry Fairfield Osborn(University of Alabama Press, 1991)

• Brian Regal: Henry Fairfield Osborn. Race and the Search for the Origins of Man (Ashgate, 2002)

• Gray Brechin: “Conserving the Race: Natural Aristocracies, Eugenics and the U.S. Conservation Movement,” Antipode 28 (1996): 229-245

• Alexandra Stern: Eugenic Nation: Faults & Frontiers of Better Breeding in America (UC Press, 2005)

• Anthony M. Platt: Bloodlines (Paradigm, 2006)• Laura L. Lovett: Conceiving the Future (UNC Press, 2007)• Jonathan Spiro: Defending the Master Race (2009)

Themes in the History of the Eugenics and Environmental Movements, 1900-

1950• “Degeneration” of both the human biological

species and the natural environment• Socio-Economic Background: The Progressive

Era (1880-1940s), the “Culture of Control” and the Reign of the “Scientific Expert”

• Nostalgia and idealization of the past• Elitism: Preserving the “best” people and

environments, including species

Degeneration: Racial and Environmental

[Program, Race Betterment Foundation Meeting, 1915]

Massive deforestation at Gold King Mine, Colorado, late 19th century[From Christian Young, The Environment and

Science (ABC-Clio, 2005): p. 72]

Degeneracy was a universal process

Growing Concern about The Differential Birth Rate

• The lower socio-economic classes had a much higher birth-rate than the educated and higher socio-economic classes- London Manual Laborers: 6.1 / family- “Edinburgh degenerates”: 5.2 / family- Harvard graduates: 2.0 / family- British intellectuals: 1.5 / family

• Result: The Swamping Effect[Data from Pearson; see Pearl, “Breeding Better Men” (1908)]

“Degeneration and the Second Law”

[“Ce sera la fin!” Camille Flammarion, La fin du monde (Paris, 1893): 127; from L. P. Williams, 1978: p. 212]

Combating Human Degeneration: Control of Reproduction

Francis Galton, Darwin’s cousin, coined the term “Eugenics” in 1883, as the “Science of being well-born”.• It was, he wrote, “the study

of the agencies under social control that improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally.”

[Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty (1883): pp. 24, n]

(1822-1911)

Eugenics Supported by Many Scientific Elites(C.B Davenport, Irving Fisher, T.H. Morgan, Alexander Graham Bell)

Advisory Board, Eugenics Record Office, Cold Spring Harbor, 1912

Eugenicists Saw Their Work as Based on New Science of Genetics

• Newly-rediscovered Mendelian theory (1900)

• Mental and Moral Traits were inherited within family and racial groups

• Most social problems were caused by poor heredity

Pedigree for Manic Depression

Eugenicists Promoted Two Types of Political Activity in the United States

(1900-1940)

• Immigration Restriction (1921-1924) Following World War I

• Compulsory State Sterilization Laws for “Genetically Unfit”

Immigration Seemed a Major Threat

• Floods of new immigrants after WW I Created “Panic”• Eugenicists opposed immigration from Eastern and Southern

Europe, the Balkans, and Jews (from anywhere)

“New immigrants”were portrayed as genetically inferior, degenerate, diseased and political radicals

Anti-Immigration Sentiment in the

Press

State Sterilization Laws by 1935

United States Only

Superseded by Nazi Germany

• By 1960s U.S. had sterilized some 65,000 so-called genetic defectives

• By 1945 Germany had sterilized 400,000+ such individuals

Note U.S. cited as a precedent

Environmental Conservation Movement Grew Out of Several

Elite Traditions in American Culture

• Transcendentalism and the Romantic cult of “Nature” (Thoreau, Emerson, Albert Bierstadt, the “Hudson River School”)

• Rugged Exploration of the outdoors (especially the west) and big game hunting

Codified in The Boone and Crockett Club• Founded by Theodore Roosevelt in 1887 “To promote

the manly sport with the rifle.”• Membership (by invitation only) limited to 100:

Members: Must have killed (and mounted) at least three species of large North American mammals

• After 1895 increasingly devoted to conservation/preservation

• Early members:Gifford Pinchot C. Hart MerriamAlbert Bierstadt Henry Fairfield OsbornHenry Cabot Lodge George Bird Grinnell

Variety of Conservation Initiatives, 1870-1920

1872: Yellowstone Park Act1883: Adirondak Forest Act1886: Audubon Society founded, U.S. Division of Forestry1887: Hatch Act (Agriculture Exp Stations)1892: Sierra Club founded by John Muir1905: US Forest Service Formed1908: Roosevelt’s Governors Conference1909-13: 1st of five Nat’l Conservation Conferences1916: National Park Service organized1918: Migratory Bird Treaty US-Canada;1918: Save the Redwoods League (Madison Grant, H.F.

Osborn & John C. Merriam)

Eugenics and Environmental Conservation/Preservation Are

Exemplified in the Work of Madison Grant

(1865-1937)

Background and Education• Wealthy New York Lawyer:• Educated:

- Yale (B.A. 1887) - Columbia Law School (1890)

• Naturalist & Anthropoligist• Avid eugenicist and

immigration restrictionist• Big Game Hunter 1865-1937

Grant as Naturalist• Over 50 natural history

articles (1894-1935)• Co-Founder (with

Henry Fairfield Osborn) of New York Zoological Society & Zoo

• Sponsored variety of legislative initiatives

• Co-Founder “Save the Redwoods League” in 1918

Grant and the Campaign for Wildlife Management

• Grant argued that animal populations needed to be “managed” by scientific experts

• Need for both natural predation and “culling the herd” to preserve the best “germ plasm”

• Sponsored “Game Refuge Bill in 1907 to create “refuges” within national forests where large game could flourish

Kaibab Plateau Deer Crisis, 1908-1930s• 1908, pressure from western

ranchers and “naive sentimentalists” to eliminatepredators from the Kaibab Plateau

• 1915-1925: Deer population exploded

[Chris Young, In the Absence of Predators]

• Consequences: Over-grazingAnd mass starvation

[From G.G. Simpson, Life (Harcourt, Brace, 1957: 649, 655]

Grant’s Evolutionary Views

• As a Darwinian, Grant viewed evolution as guided by climate and competition: harsh conditions and struggle in nature produced the hardiest species

• Unnatural migrations of animal populations were biologically deleterious, leading to: (a) hybridization (b) displacement of endemic species or (c) extinction of both

• Grant’s eugenical views flowed directly from his natural history and conservation ideology: He agreed with eugenicist Ellsworth Huntington that:“The [human] germ plasm is the nation’s most precious natural resource. Eugenics is thus an integral component in the conservation of our natural resources.”[Ellsworth Huntington, Tomorrow’s Children: The Goal of Eugenics (Wiley, 1935); Spiro, 2009: p. 136]

Grant’s Major Eugenical Work

In Humans Nordics Are Hardiest

• Demands of harsh winter “produce[d] a strong, virile, and self-contained race which would inevitably overwhelm . . . nations whose weaker elements had not been purged . . .by an equally severe environment.” [Grant, Passing of the Great Race (1916): 155]

Race As the Basis of Human History

“European history has been written in terms of nationality and of language, but never before in terms of race; yet race has played a far larger part than either language or nationality in molding the destinies of men; race implies heredity, and heredity implies all the moral, social, and intellectual characteristics and traits which are the springs of politics and civilization.”[H.F. Osborn, “Preface” to The Passing of the Great Race (Scribners, 1918: vii]

• Dolchicephalic:- Alpine: “always and everywhere a race of peasants”

- Nordic: “preeminently fitted to maritime pursuits”

• Brachycephalic- Mediterranean: “inferior in

bodily stamina to both the Nordic and Alpine, but is probably the superior to both in the field of art.”[Passing of the Great Race: p. 198)]

Racial Differences Based on Skull Morphology

Grant’s Eugenics was Fully Integrated with his Conservationism

An obituary for him in the New York Herald Tribune (June 2, 1937): captured this spirit:“The preservation of the redwoods, of the bison, of the Alaskan caribou, of the bald eagle . . . of the spirit of the early American colonist, . . . and of the purity of the ‘Nordic’type of humanity in this country, were all his personal concerns, all products of the same urge in him to save precious things.”

Grant Was A Favorite of Hitler• Hitler called Grant’s

Passing of the Great Race “his Bible,” the basis of the Nazi “Racial State”

• Grant was impressed with the Nazis and was invited to visit Berlin in 1935

Nature Served As a Parable for Human Society

• Humans had strayed from their “natural” state• Eugenics was aimed at restoring human

society to its “noble past”• This meant preserving the pure races• The giant redwoods of California were one of

their most important symbols

Redwoods As A Racial Symbol

’“ ”The immortal sequoia - is far from

being a battered remnant . . . [but] is a beautiful, indomitable tree. Burned and hacked and butchered, it sprouts up again with a vitality truly amazing.”[Madison Grant, National Geographic (1920)]

The big trees of Calaveras Country are “the noblest of a noble race . . .” -John Muir“They are the survivors of a splendid race” -John C. Merriam

“It would be little short of barbarous to allow the destruction of these trees, the oldest living things on earth.”[Grant To Roosevelt, 1904]

[From Madison Grant“Saving the Redwoods”National Geographic (1920): p. 350]

Redwood groves described as “cathedrals”, a “sanctuary”, “pervaded by divine light”

Stories Paralleled Human Racial Hisory• Redwoods were the

plant equivalents of the sturdy Nordics with overlapping time- frames

• Redwoods told the story of the human saga:- Survival- Hardiness- Both threatened byinvasions of inferior species

Leif Eriksson

Metaphors of Morality• Nature demonstrates what is pure,

primeval, rugged, virile in ourselves.• Nature study leads to “awakening of

race consciousness,” teaching children respect for the “order of nature”

• Eugenicists/Environmentalists shared a romanticized yearning for an idealized nature and social past (essentialism)

• Represented a static view of nature

Socio-Economic Context of Conservation & Eugenics

Both movements embodied aspects of “Progressivism” as it developed in the U.S. and Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries:- Move away from laissez-faire to managed capitalism by state intervention and regulation- Rational management by scientific experts- Efficiency: Solve problems before they arise- Opposition to rampant social and environmental degeneration of urban, industrial life and the degradation of nature

Concerns for Today’s Environmentalist Movement

• Current environmentalist movement sometimes retains a strain of elitism & top-down management

• As Alexandra Stern notes: “. . . There is no denying that the apparition of eugenics sits restlessly at the heart of environmentalism, revisiting periodically during debates over urban sprawl, immigration and overpopulation.” [Eugenic Nation (2005): 148]

• Role of the “scientific expert” and local populations• Is it a coincidence that today, a major field of

ecological study concerns “invasive species,” at a time we are experiencing the most heated immigration debates since the 1920s?

Acknowledgements• The Humanities Center, Washington University• Forum for History of Science in America, History of

Science Society (November, 2008)• Colleagues:

- Gregg Mittman - Kim Kleinman- Jonathan Spiro - Tony Platt- Allan Larson - Jane Maienschein- Laura Lovett - Ben Hake

• Julie Thomas, Archives of California State University at Sacramento