From a reader:
Wow. This brochure touting the “research” of Albert Edward Wiggam is about the ugliest thing I’ve read to date on eugenics or, as they term it, “the science of being well-born”. It also vindicates just about every premise of Liberal Facism in one primary source document.
Also, Jonah, can you comment on the difference between a facist anti-immigration movement and our current day dilemma with immigration? In my readings to date, eugenics seems to be coupled with a deep distrust of immigrants.
Some choice gems from the brochure (dated around 1918?):
Eugenics:“No man on the platform has mastered it in all its bearings more completely than Mr. Wiggam. He has collected all the leading literature of heredity in the world. Only the borderland has been explored. But stupendous facts have emerged. The race that applies them first will dominate all future history.”
New religion:“Not a fantastic scheme of ‘race breeding’ but a rational evangel of race pride, knowledge and development, that will permeate all society ‘like a new religion’. This alone will renew the blood of the nation; subdue and hold the new ‘kingdom of man’; assure Ango-Saxon supremacy; redeem the world from weakness, poverty and crime and lead humanity to ‘the goal of the world’s desire’”
Can you say “designer baby?”“Would you like to know what the color of your future children’s eyes will likely be? Or the color of their hair? Or musical talent? Or their tempers? Or their tendency to catch cold? Or their liklihood (SIC) to imbecility, epilepsy, rheumatism, tuberculosis, insanity?”
On immigrants:“We must know our IMMIGRANT’s pedigrees. They are flooding our shores with actual and potential Insanity, Imbecility, Pauperism, Prostitution, Alcoholism and Crime”
“When the low immigrant is giving us three babes while the Daughter of the Revolution is giving us one it means the Gibson and Harrison Fisher Girl is vanishing. Her place is being taken by the low-browed, broad-faced, flat-chested woman of lower Europe. “
Eugenics comes first!“No man can think correctly about education, politics, reform, marriage or human progress until he has solved once for all the environment-heredity question.”
Happiness for everyone!“Its sole aim is to decrease human misery, abolish forever human poverty and multiply the happiness of the world.”
Get me to the heredity biologist on time!“WHO MARRIED WHO and the number of children are the chief eugenical problems. Only through the new heredity can we tell who ought to marry who.”
Left-handers beware!“Why are about one-fourth of thee childen left-handed? Why is a high percentage of criminals left-handed? Is their left-handedness norman or abnormal? THE SECRE OF LEFT HANDEDNESS!”
Me: I’m on a deadline and I have to give a (invitation-only) talk at AEI in a little while, but I’ll have more on Wiggam, immigration and all that as soon as I can.
In the meantime, you gotta love all of these primary sources!