your race on the form was a felony, and could be punished by up to a year in jail.5 Cold Spring Harbor
Laboratory7- davenport
∂
The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is still around, located in Cold Spring Harbor, New
York. Now, it’s a research facility in the fields of neuroscience, plant biology, quantitative biology, and, not
surprisingly, genomics. It was originally opened in 1910 by Charles Davenport, and was known as the Carnegie
Institute of Washington. The Eugenics Record Office kept detailed family records that allowed field workers to
trace cases of mental and physical defects through a family line. Davenport also conducted studies on the
importance of other inherited traits, such as hair and eye color, hair texture, and skin pigments. In addition to
physical traits, they also tried to document how chronic diseases such as hemophilia and mental disorders like
schizophrenia, along with what they called “feeble-mindedness,” were passed through a family.4 The Immigrant
Problem8- immigration
∂
Those that supported eugenics looked to immigrants as a problem
variable that was introducing all sorts of new and undesirable genetic qualities into the
American gene pool.
Researchers at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory isolated some of the problems. For
example, those with Italian blood were said to be prone to violence. As part of their research, prison and mental
institution populations across the country were surveyed to find out just how many members of these populations
came from what immigrant group. After outbreaks of illnesses like smallpox and cholera in New York City and
immigrant-hub Ellis Island, the work of the eugenics movement began to gain credence. By 1911, they were
operating hand-in-hand with the Immigration Restriction League to influence Congress and the Surgeon General
to implement restrictions on immigration.3 Better Babies And Fitter Families Contests9- fitter families
∂
As the
eugenics movement took off, state fairs across the country started holding Better Babies contests. In some
respects, it made sense. Mothers were encouraged to bring their babies to fair judging contests, and in much the
same way as livestock was judged, babies would be judged on things like health, weight, and size. While it also
helped promote health and good child care, the “this isn’t so bad” part of this entry ends right about there. Better
Babies soon evolved into Fitter Families, a contest where whole families would present judges not only with their
happy, healthy babies, but with an abbreviated version of their racial pedigree. Doctors would perform
examinations on all the members of the family, awarding and deducting points according to guidelines, and
families were given a letter grade to show just how eugenics-friendly their family was. Winners would be
rewarded with medals and trophies in these contests, which remained hugely popular throughout the 1920s.2
Pioneered By A Stanford Professor5- jordan
∂
The whole thing was started by a Stanford professor named David
Starr Jordan. A long-time student of Charles Darwin and the ideas of natural selection and Mendelian genetics,
