Eugenics In The 1800's

The impact of the inauguration of scientific beliefs and studies on eugenics in the 1800’s is still evident in modern United States today. Eugenics is defined as eugenicists promoting the naturally fit people who carried desirable traits to increase a population with hopes of a community filled with intelligent citizens. Positive eugenics advocated the superior people to marry each other and reproduce to create as many offsprings in order to increase the number of the fit. Negative eugenics would discourage the disabled from reproducing at all, so that they would not compete with the superior. The endorsement from the government allowed scientists to implement their ideas on eugenics and some aspect of their policies is used today. Eugenicists

“The concept of “hard” heredity, or heredity that cannot change during one’s lifetime” (Larson 167) was created by Galton to describe the roles of humans as reproducing clones of themselves. Hard heredity contained the fact that certain characteristics parents have such as feeblemindedness can't be changed when passed to their offspring. Once the parents are disabled, the following generations will never be fit. There would be no way for these citizens to get better so eugenicists decide to cut their reproduction in order to decrease the amount of the challenged. As a result, scientists used hard heredity to argue for negative eugenic policy by labeling and categorizing those who are feeble minded, criminals, alcoholics, and epileptics to be socially unfit and thus provide no successful use in a society (Larson 173). By expanding the amount of people labeled as mentally challenged, the public supported the creation of institutions to segregate the disabled in order “to protect society from the menace of mental defectives” (Larson 178). This emanated eugenic policy from Galton’s hard heredity to be applied in everyday

Charles Goddard’s aim was to segregate the disabled community from the dangers of society As a result, he wanted mental institutions to be created, but due to the high cost of these institutions, Goddard needed the government's’ help with money. He convinced the government to create these institutions by saying, “train them, make them happy; make them as useful as possible, but above all, bring them up with good habits and keep them from ever marrying or becoming parents” (Larson 178). By promoting this, he suggested that creating these mental institutions allowed for the unfit to become useful again in society. Moreover, “in 1896, Connecticut became the first state to comply when it decreed that “no man and woman either of whom is epileptic, imbecile, or feeble minded” could intermarry, or live together as husband and wife, when the woman is under forty-five years of age” (Larson 176). This implementation of marriage laws initiated negative eugenics as it disallowed the mentally ill to marry and create offspring in order to reduce the