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Harry Laughlin
"...At one hearing, Laughlin plastered the walls of the meeting room with photographs taken at Ellis Island. Above the photos hung a banner that read 'Carriers of the Germ Plasm of the Future American Population.'"1
Overview
Between 1890 and 1914, over 15 million immigrants entered the United States. In some large cities, one out of every three residents was foreign-born. Many Amercians felt threatened by the newcomers. Since the late 1700s, the United States had always been a country that seemed to pride itself on having open doors when it came to immigration--at least to those immigrants who were not of African descent. But from the late 1800s to the early decades of the 1900s, a progression of immigration restriction laws slowly began to close those doors ( see the progression). This progression culminated in a series of anti-immigration laws in the 1920s. The eugenics movement, and especially Harry Laughlin of the Eugenics Records Office (ERO), played a crucial role in bringing about these stricter laws on immigration.
House Committee on Immigration
In 1920 the House Committee on Immigration held hearings on the "immigration problem." Among those who testified was Laughlin. The committee consisted of fifteen representatives and was chaired by Albert Johnson of Washington state. Johnson was so impressed with Laughlin's testimony before the committee that he appointed Laughlin "Expert Eugenics Agent of the House Committee on Immigration."
Whenever Laughlin testified, he brought charts, graphs, pedigree charts, and the results of hundreds of IQ tests as evidence of "the immigrant menace." At one hearing, he plastered the walls of the meeting room with photographs taken at Ellis Island. Above the photos hung a banner that read "Carriers of the Germ Plasm of the Future American Population."2
The only scientist who publicly disputed Laughlin's findings, Herbert Spencer Jennings, was ignored. When Jennings, a biologist, told the committee that Laughlin's statistics were flawed, his testimony was cut short. Members of Congress were not interested in hearing that Laughlin's charts and graphs proved the opposite of what he claimed that they proved. Most newspapers and magazines also ignored Jennings's testimony. Reporters found Laughlin's lurid findings more compelling. After all, those findings confirmed what many Americans already believed: immigrants were "different" and those differences threatened the American way of life.
The Debate in Congress
In his testimony before the House Committee on Immigration, John Trevor, a New York attorney and member of a group called the Allied Patriotic Societies, proposed that Congress limit immigration to two percent of the immigrants from each country living in the United States in 1890. The date was critical, because most immigrants from southern and eastern Europe arrived after 1890. The House of Representatives debated Trevor's plan in March and April of 1924. Excerpts from the debate reveal how strongly members of Congress felt about immigration. It also reveals the extent of the influence of Harry Laughlin and other eugenicists. In the end, the bill passed by an overwhelming majority in both the House of Representatives (373 to 71) and the Senate (62 to 6). In May 1925, President Calvin Coolidge signed the National Origins Act into law. The results were immediate and longlasting. Between 1925 and 1930, immigration decreased 44 percent. It fell another 83 percent between 1931 and 1935, during which time the Depression also had a profound effect. When he signed the act into law, Coolidge wrote: "There are racial considerations too grave to be brushed aside for any sentimental reasons. Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend. The Nordics propagate themselves successfully. With other races, the outcome suggests that observance of ethnic law is as great a necessity to a nation as immigration law." 3
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Heredity in Relation to Eugenics
In 1911, Charles Davenport published "Heredity in Relation to Eugenics," arguably the most influential textbook on eugenics written during the peak of the American eugenics movement. According to scholar Allan Chase, "[this textbook] was used in the systematic indoctrination of more professors and their students in the life, behavioral, and social scieces than any other book produced by Galton's disciples between 1869 and 1920."4
Davenport's textbook included the racist and antisemitic rhetoric of the eugenics movement. In the section entitled "Recent Immigration to America," Davenport's antisemitic views are apparent. Although he considered the Jews to be more literate than other immigrants,
...on the other hand they show the greatest proportion of offenses against chastity and, in connection with prostitution, the lowest of crimes. There is no question that, taken as a whole, the hordes of Jews that are now coming to us from Russia and the extreme southeast of Europe, with their intense individualism and ideals of gain at the cost of any interest, represent the opposite extreme from the early English and more recent Scandinavian immigration with their ideals of community life in the open country, advancement by the sweat of their brow, and the uprearing of their families in the fear of God and the love of country."5
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Facing History Resources
• Race and Membership in American History: The Eugenics Movement (Facing History and Ourselves National Foundation, Inc., Brookline, Massachusetts) 2002, Chapter 6, "Eugenics, Citizenship, and Immigration."
• America and the Holocaust (Facing History and Ourselves National Foundation, Inc., Brookline, Massachusetts) film and study guide.
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Print and Video Resources
• The Legacy of Malthus: The Social Costs of the New Scientific Racism by Allan Chase (Alfred A. Knopf, New York) 1976.
• Heredity in Relation to Eugenics by Charles Benedict Davenport (H. Holt and Company, New York) 1911.
• Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876-1917 by Matthew Frye Jacobson (Hill and Wang, New York) 2000.
• Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race by Matthew Frye Jacobson (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts) 1998.
• Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes, and the Immigrant Menace by A.M. Kraut (Basic Books, New York) 1994.
• Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis: 1938-1941 by David Wyman (Pantheon Books, New York) C.1985.
• Forgotten Ellis Island, a documentary film by journalist Lorie Conway, narrated by Elliott Gould. (www.forgottenellisisland.com)
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Web Resources
• Cold Spring Harbor: American Eugenics Image Archive -- See section entitled "Immigration Restriction"
(http://vector.cshl.org/eugenics/)
• PBS' The First Measured Century: Scientific Racism interview with Alan Kraut
(http://www.pbs.org/fmc/interviews/kraut.htm)
• Clip from: "Forgotten Ellis Island" by Lorie Conway
This 3-minute clip features immigrants who received an X mark and became known as the "faces of the feebleminded."
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1 "Harry H. Laughlin, 'Expert Eugenics Agent' for the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, 1921 to 1931." by Frances Hassencahl (UMI Dissertation Services) 1970, p. 247.
2 Ibid.
3 Need to find Coolidge quote reference.
4 The Legacy of Malthus: The Social Costs of the New Scientific Racism by Allan Chase (Alfred A. Knopf, New York) 1976, p. 156.
5 Ibid., pp. 160-161.
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