LEADING THE RACE: EUGENICS IN CALIFORNIA, 1896-1945 by Joseph W. Sokolik, B.A. A thesis submitted to the Graduate Council of Texas State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts with a Major in History December 2013 Committee Members: Rebecca Montgomery, Chair Anadelia Romo Jeffrey Helgeson COPYRIGHT by Joseph W. Sokolik 2013 FAIR USE AND AUTHOR’S PERMISSION STATEMENT Fair Use This work is protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States (Public Law 94-553, section 107). Consistent with fair use as defined in the Copyright Laws, brief quotations from this material are allowed with proper acknowledgment. Use of this material for financial gain without the author’s express written permission is not allowed. Duplication Permission As the copyright holder of this work I, Joseph W. Sokolik, authorize duplication of this work, in whole or in part, for educational or scholarly purposes only. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to everyone in the Department of History at Texas State University-San Marcos for all of their support and guidance throughout my entire graduate career. To all of my professors, thank you for your constant inspiration. First and foremost, I would like to thank Dr. Rebecca Montgomery for her guidance and advice throughout the writing process. To Dr. Montgomery, Dr. Mary Brennan, Dr. James McWilliams, Dr. Jeff Helgeson, Dr. Ana Romo, Dr. Paul Hart, Dr. Angela Murphy, and Dr. Jesús Francisco de la Teja—you are the best group of educators out there and have deepened my appreciation and love for history, a task that I did not believe possible just a few years ago. Also, I would like to give a special thank you to Dr. Deborah Cunningham in the Department of Anthropology for welcoming me into her classroom and letting me wax poetic about eugenic theory and its modern implications. To my colleagues, thanks for helping me rise to a higher standard of learning and for the numerous conversations, historical and otherwise. Thanks to the librarians, archivists, and staff at Alkek Library at Texas State University-San Marcos and the Perry-Castañeda Library at the University of Texas at Austin. Without your direction and expertise, this essay would have never lifted off the ground. To all of my family and friends, thank you for checking in on my sanity and for offering your love and support throughout this process. To my mother, Barbara, thank you for inspiring me with your own budding interests in historical writing and preservation. To my father, Joe, thank you for your ceaseless support and devotion, and iv for always taking the time to listen and relate. To Harris, your generosity and good- natured spirit help keep me anchored at times of panic. Gary, Charles, Todd, and Aaron—thanks for your encouragement and companionship. To everyone in Hard Proof—stay hard. Lastly, thanks to all of my Khabele colleagues for tolerating and showing interest in my dual life as a scholar and for giving me the opportunity to teach part-time while pursuing another degree. Lastly, I would like to thank everyone that stopped to chat with me about the bizarre topic of this paper over the last year. Our numerous sidewalk and barroom discussions over the past year have greatly informed the content of this essay. I never imagined so many rich opportunities for conversation imbedded in this topic, and I am eternally grateful. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...............................................................................................iv CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................1 2. EXPERTS LEAD THE WAY TO EUGENIC PRACTICE..............................12 3. STERILIZATION IN CALIFORNIA STATE HOSPITALS...........................30 4. THE HUMAN BETTERMENT FOUNDATION AND THE PRESERVATION OF EUGENICS IN CALIFORNIA............................58 5. CONCLUSION..................................................................................................90 APPENDIX SECTION......................................................................................................95 REFERENCES................................................................................................................104 vi CHAPTER 1 Introduction In July of 2013, national headlines revealed that between 2006 and 2010, physicians in California prisons sterilized 148 female prisoners without state approval. Doctors contracted by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation— funded by the state of California—performed the surgeries on women pregnant upon their admittance to prison. Many of the inmates claimed that they were pressured into signing consent forms, often under the pain and duress of labor during childbirth. One accused physician, Dr. James Heinrich of the Valley State Prison for Women, claimed that pregnant women admitted to prisons were a burden on the state, as they often committed crimes in order to receive medical treatment. He justified the procedure, which cost an average of $147,469, in financial terms and argued that, “Over a ten year period, that isn’t a huge amount of money compared to what you save in welfare paying for these unwanted children.” Since 1994 the state has authorized medical officials to determine the necessity of sterilization on a case-by-case basis. While the state did not directly grant permission for the operations, Dr. Heinrich and other physicians acted within their authority.1 The recent accusations are the only most recent chapter in California’s long record of state-sanctioned sterilizations. Although the state’s sterilization program was officially dismantled in 1979, California’s history of sterilization dates back to the early- 1 Additionally, interviews and state documents indicate that perhaps 100 more sterilizations were performed in the late 1990s. From Corey G. Johnson. “Female Inmates Sterilized in California Prisons Without Approval.” The Center for Investigative Reporting. July 7, 2013. http://cironline.org/reports/female-inmates-sterilized-california-prisons-without-approval-4917 1 twentieth century, when the state developed the most aggressive sterilization program in the nation. Between 1909 and 1979, with state authorization, physicians in California prisons and hospitals performed more than 20,000 sterilizations—one-third of the national total. Philanthropists and experts boasted of their success in pamphlets and convened with government officials around the globe, which helped the movement spread throughout the nation and the world. Over 95 percent of the operations occurred between 1909 until the Second World War, the peak years of California’s sterilization program. During those years—and in the recent operations on California’s female prisoners—medical personnel received complete authority to perform sterilizations and justified their cause in economic terms, arguing that future generations would become an unnecessary financial burden on the state. This thesis explores three unique dimensions of California’s eugenics program: the impact of progressive science and eugenic thought on state legislators, the role of physicians and medical superintendents in enactment of eugenic law and practice, and the efforts of eugenicists to preserve the state sterilization program long after the demise of eugenic practices elsewhere in the United States. Eugenic reformers in California were initially inspired by humanitarian ideals and placed great faith in promises of experimental science, but the rising size and cost of mental health services prompted state and medical officials to increasingly embrace eugenic forms of treatment, a pattern that resonated with California eugenicists well into the 1940s. A close examination of the background of eugenics is imperative to an understanding of California’s sterilization campaign. The so-called “science” of eugenics came to prominence in the U.S. at the turn of the twentieth century as part of an 2 international movement that became a “sort of secular religion” to its most ardent supporters. Historians of eugenics have identified four factors that contributed to the rise of the field, which first gained widespread acceptance in Britain and the U.S.2 The first was the rediscovery in 1900 of Gregor Mendel’s nineteenth-century experiments on heredity and the hybridization of pea plants. He rejected the principle of inheritance of acquired characteristics and questioned long-accepted beliefs regarding inheritance. His studies led eugenicists to the conclusion that human offspring inherited the innate characteristics of their parents, including personality and behavioral traits.3 Another factor in the rise of eugenics was the development of pedigree studies that allegedly verified the prevalence of “feeble-mindedness” in criminals and mental patients in state institutions. In the late-nineteenth century sociologist Richard L. Dugdale argued that succeeding generations demonstrated a genetic predisposition toward low intelligence and he provided detailed graphs and charts to document the roles of poverty, criminality and disease in shaping mental inheritance.4 The most famous of such studies were those of the Jukes and Kallikak families, which were widely cited throughout the 2 For more on the international context of eugenics and its spread after World War I, see Frank D. Dikötter, “Race Culture: Recent Perspectives on the History of Eugenics,” The American Historical Review 103, no. 2 (April 1998): 467-478. 3 Modern geneticists acknowledge that Mendel’s work was flawed, as he failed to recognize the role of the environment in expressing hereditary traits. For a thorough account of the background of eugenics and its European origins, see Mark Haller, Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in American Thought (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1963), 8-20, 59. 4 The names Juke and Kallikak were pseudonyms used to protect the identity of the family members in the studies conducted by Dugdale and Goddard. See Richard L. Dugdale, The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1877); and Henry H. Goddard, The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness (New York: MacMillan, 1912). For a republication and an updated interpretation of the eugenic family studies, see also Nicole Hahn Rafter, White Trash: The Eugenic Family Studies, 1877-1919 (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1988). 3 genetic science community and shaped the views of many on the issue of heredity.5 To many social scientists at the time, the hereditarian studies seemed to justify restriction of breeding practices among those deemed “genetically inferior.” The third factor that contributed to eugenics’ prominence was the emergence of a generation that felt obligated to impose scientific order on an increasingly chaotic society. In 1909 a group of progressive reformers—disproportionately represented by the urban middle and upper classes—split the state’s Republican Party and seized control of the legislature. California progressives first turned their attention to securing power from the railroad machine—which had dominated politics in the West since the mid-nineteenth century—but then quickly shifted to the passage of exclusionary laws aimed at imposing moral order upon the state’s poor and working classes. For example, California’s 1909 state legislature passed a number of restrictive laws that included censorship and limitations on social behavior. Also among the new laws was a curious bill titled “An act to permit the asexualization of inmates.”6 The fourth and perhaps most elusive factor was the propaganda effort of the eugenicists themselves, which was stronger in California than the rest of the nation. The dissemination of eugenics is largely attributed to the efforts of Sir Francis Galton, a British statistician who coined the term “eugenics,” established the movement in 5 Hereditarian studies of a similar nature received controversial attention in 1994 with the publication of Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994). 6 “An Act to Permit Asexualization of Inmates of the State Hospitals and the Home for Feeble- Minded Children, and Convicts in State Prisons,” The Statues of California and Amendments to the Codes Passed at the Extra Session of the Thirty-Seventh Legislature (Sacramento, 1909), 1093-1094. From The Internet Archive. http://www.archive.org/stream/generallawsofsta00calirich/generallawsofsta00calirich_djvu.txt (accessed September 10, 2013). 4