Kevles on Pearson's Eugenics
All Quotations are from Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, University of California Press, 1985.
Pearson, no doubt, had his own prejudice as regards human excellence ("fitness") and as regards hereditary traits, in addition to his own political ideology; but he also exhibited a sort of consistency as a scientist. It is very important to distinguish these two aspects, in order to appraise the significance of his eugenic studies.
To Pearson, the demographic trend was dangerous. Generalizing mainly on Danish statistical studies, he argued that half of each generation was the product of one-quarter of its married predecessor. The prolific quarter represented only from one-sixth to one eighth of the adult population and was drawn disproportionately from the "unfit", which in Pearson's lexicon meant "the habitual criminal, the professional tramp, the tuberculous, the insane, the mentally defective, the alcoholic, the diseased from birth or from excess."
He noted that children had never been an economic asset for the "cultured classes"; rather, they were "a luxury which we know we must pay for, and expect to pay for, until after college and professional training, and in the case of unmarried daughters, often until long after our own lives are concluded." No doubt in the interests of economy, the "cultured classes" increasingly indulged in "neo-Malthusianism," as the practice of birth control was also often called, but by limiting family size they failed in their imperial reproductive duty; they deprived the nation of brains. ... Children had been an economic asset for the responsible working class until the passage of such measures as the Factory Acts, Pearson argued. The prohibitions against child labor transformed children into economic liabilities, and the better class of workers quickly reduced their birth rate, leaving the principal task of procreation to the socially worst. (Kevles 1985, 33)
In the eiteen-eighties, Pearson had pinned the excessive reproduction of the socially unfit upon capitalism, which, with its demand for cheap labor, encouraged the immigration of workers below a desirable standard. In the early twentieth century, he found his target in liberal reformism. ... In his opinion, such measures as the minimum wage, the eight-hour day, free medical advice, and reductions in infant mortality encouraged an increase in unemployables, degenerates, and physical and mental weaklings. Natural selection, he believed, had been suspended, and replaced by "reproductive selection," which gave the battle "to the most fertile, not the most fit." (Kevles 1985, 33-4)
Pearson, the enthusiast of the study, claimed that he had neither the responsibility nor sufficient knowledge to advance legislative programs. He declared that his principal purpose was to explore scientifically the theories---particularly those regarding the relative weights of nature and nurture---on which a sound eugenic policy should be built. To recognize why nations rose and fell, everything that contributed to human character had to be studied "not by verbal argument, but ... under the statistical microscope," he wrote. "The study of Eugenics centres round the actuarial treatment of human society in all its phases, healthy and morbid." Pearson's purpose, however, was no more disinterested than his eugenics was unprejudiced. (Kevles 1985, 34)
A significant part of the department's efforts [after 1911] went into eugenic studies. Pearson relied heavily on numerous volunteers, both on his staff and elsewhere in England. Some were medical men, others social workers. From hospitals, schools, and ordinary homes, they gathered material bearing on the "inheritance" of scientific, commercial, and legal ability, but also of hermaphroditism, hemophilia, cleft palate, harelip, tuberculosis, diabetes, deaf-mutism, polydactyly (more than five fingers) or brachydactyly (stub fingers), insanity, and mental deficiency. Pearson published the raw data, including charts and illustrations, in an occasional compendium called The Treasury of Human Inheritance, a publication he considered "a pressing necessity of the time". Whatever its bearing upon social questions, the Treasury, though in parts flawed by Pearson's assumptions as to what was hereditary, was one of the first orderly aggregations of data on human heredity, and as such was in fact a scientific treasure. (Kevles 1985, 38-9)
Ethel M.Elderton summarized the attitude that suffused the Galton Laboratory's key eugenic endeavors: "Improvement in social conditions will not compensate for a bad hereditary influence. ... The only way to keep a nation strong mentally and physically is to see to it that each new generation is derived chiefly from the fitter members of the generation before." What Pearson's department produced was a mixture of sound statistical science with usually biased explorations in human heredity. But in the early years of the twentieth century it was the sole British establishment for eugenic research, the principal source of authoritative eugenic science, the scientific benchmark of all eugenic discussion in England. (Kevles 1985, 40)
Last modified November 16, 1999. (c) Soshichi Uchii
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