THE GRUESOME SCIENCE
If mankind could be perfected over time, one of the best ways to do so, the theory went, would be by weeding out defective and less desirable genes from the pool. It had been a fantasy for millennia, dating back to at least as early as when Socrates speculated that humans could be bred like livestock, with only the best being allowed to reproduce. The rest of us could be sterilized, aborted, prevented from marrying or mixing with people of other races, or forced to use birth control to guarantee that our genetic material wasn’t passed on to pollute future generations.
Modern eugenics—its name derived from the Greek for “well born”—sprang up in the mid-nineteenth century among progressive thinkers and scientists. It was coined by a British scientist and a cousin of Charles Darwin named Francis Galston, who mused, “If a twentieth part of the cost and pains were spent in measures for the improvement of the human race that is spent on the improvement of the breed of horses and cattle, what a galaxy of genius might we not create!”
Darwin took his cousin’s theories on natural selection and not only applied them to humans but also argued that humans could manipulate this selection process themselves to create a kind of superrace.
Progressives like Ely would champion forced sterilization and social science to examine differences among races. A “Race Betterment Foundation” for the promotion of eugenics was launched, as was American Breeders Magazine. An International Eugenics Congress in London began under the leadership of Major Leonard Darwin, Charles Darwin’s son, with “undesirables” being the target of its campaign to perfect the human species. The Anglo-Saxon race was considered the epitome of humanity.
One of the leading eugenic theorists was Madison Grant, an avid conservationist who also had some interesting ideas about how to “conserve” the Nordic race. In his book, The Passing of the Great Race, Grant proposed a plan that included the outright elimination of “the least desirable, let us say, ten percent of the community,” which he described as “unemployed and unemployable human residuum” and a “great mass of crime, poverty, alcoholism, and feeble-mindedness.” After that, he called for “restricting the perpetuation”—sterilization—“of the then remaining least valuable types” among those that remained. “By this method,” Grant argued, “mankind might ultimately become sufficiently intelligent to deliberately choose the most vital and intellectual strains to carry on the race.”
Two men in particular were greatly affected by Grant’s writing. One was a friend from conservationist circles, a man named Teddy Roosevelt, who praised Grant for writing “a capital book; in purpose, in vision, in grasp of the facts of our people most need to realize . . . and all Americans should be sincerely grateful to you for writing it.”
Half a world away, Grant’s ideas also inspired a young German. He was a veteran of the World War I and a failed artist whose own radical ideas on race were starting to take shape while he was in prison in the 1920s. He called Grant’s work his “Bible”—and very soon the world would come to know Adolf Hitler’s name.
Dewey went on to become a career academic and progressive educational reformer, arguing that only a far larger governmental apparatus could cure the social ills of the twentieth century. He argued that freedom was not “something that individuals have as a ready-made possession”; it was “something to be achieved.” In this view, freedom was not a gift from God or nature; it was a product of human making, a gift from the state. He emphasized state influence on early-childhood education in order to spread the progressive doctrine to children as early as possible, no matter what views they were exposed to at home.
Progressive academics such as Dewey and Wilson, who eventually left the legal profession to teach (first at Cornell and Bryn Mawr and then at Princeton), had an ally in American Protestantism. Most social scientists such as Ely and Wilson were devout Christians themselves and open about their desire as Christian missionaries to build a kingdom of heaven on earth. This was the “social gospel,” a vision of Hegel’s and Ely’s progressivism that sought economic and social improvement by applying Christian ethics. Clergymen made up nearly half of the American Economic Association’s charter members. Preachers from pulpits across America railed against capitalism as selfish. The solution was a new kind of Christian socialism that encouraged more labor unions and cooperative economics.
The “social gospel” organizers mobilized millions on behalf of their cause for reform. One of the first mass organizations was the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, founded in 1873. Its goal was to create a “sober and pure world” by encouraging abstinence, sexual purity, and devotion to Christian doctrine (as the organization’s members defined it). Other groups also sprouted up—such as the YMCA and the Industrial Workers of the World—which marched, petitioned, and organized on behalf of progressive, and sometimes outright radical, reform.
By now, progressivism had captured the allegiance of a new generation of academics in campuses across America, along with thousands of pastors now evangelizing their flocks regarding the importance of social reform.
What progressivism needed next was a national leader to bring it all together and sell it to the masses.
BRYAN AND THE PROGRESSIVE PRAIRIE FIRE
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Until 1896, progressivism in America had been confined to churches and campuses. But with one stirring speech, William Jennings Bryan changed all that.
Though a relative newcomer to the political scene, Bryan had a keen sense of how the winds were blowing in American politics. He positioned himself as a new kind of Democrat, the leader of a prairie insurgency against the Eastern elites. He thundered that Washington needed to “suppress” the business trusts and give debt relief by coining silver. He also supported the first peacetime income tax passed by Congress, although it was subsequently declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.
At that time, there was just one federal social-welfare program: the Pension Office, which dispensed funds to Civil War veterans. Government was almost exclusively a state and local affair. Bryan had little in common with the bespectacled social scientists of Johns Hopkins and the University of Wisconsin, but he was a devout believer in the social gospel that had captured Christianity in the late nineteenth century.
Bryan’s populist campaign came as the Democratic Party warred against itself, torn between Eastern business interests supporting the Democrat incumbent Grover Cleveland’s hands-off approach to the economy and the Southern farmers and Western mining interests hit hardest by the calamitous Panic of 1893. The haves, said the progressives and the populists, had given themselves everything, and therefore they thrived even when the economy was in a depression. Now the have-nots were going to exact their revenge—and as the next president of the United States, William Jennings Bryan would be the one to do it.
Bryan was a true believer, an idealist of the most innocent kind. He knew that this new populism could propel him to the presidency, but he also believed in it deeply. So did millions of others who raged at the “robber barons,” such as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J. P. Morgan. Bryan was channeling the mistrust and confusion generated by the rapid pace of change during the Industrial Revolution. Bryan and his followers wanted the federal government to step in and level the playing field for the working masses. Grover Cleveland represented the old Democratic Party of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, skeptical of federal power. But now, aligned against Cleveland and the “robber barons,” was a new party, one that had been bubbling up in local and state elections for a few years but had little presence nationally: the “People’s Party” or “Populists.”
Dubbed “hayseeds” and “anarchists” by their opponents and derided for their wispy beards and unkempt appearances, they embodied the first progressive movement in America. Through twenty-first-century lenses, nothing seems very radical about the demands of the People’s Party. They called for massive public-works projects to reduce unemployment. They demanded federal relief f
or poverty-stricken farmers, particularly cotton farmers in the South and wheat farmers in the West. They wanted strict limits on and disclosure requirements of political campaign contributions, the registration of lobbyists, and the recording and publication of congressional committee proceedings. They urged states to adopt measures for “direct democracy,” including recall elections, referendums where citizens could decide on a law by popular vote, and initiatives where citizens could even propose a law by petition and popular vote. They wanted social initiatives, such as a national health service including all existing government medical agencies, social insurance, limited injunctions in strikes, a minimum-wage law for women, an eight-hour workday, a federal securities commission, an inheritance tax, and a constitutional amendment to allow a federal income tax.
Eventually, the political initiatives of the People’s Party also included women’s suffrage, direct election of senators, primary elections for state and federal nominations, the recall of judges, and new rights for labor unions. As I said, not very radical. But most of all, the People’s Party wanted silver.
The gold standard—the idea that American paper currency was backed by actual stockpiles of gold—had been in place since what some called the Crime of ’73, the 1873 Fourth Coinage Act that demonetized silver. People’s Party adherents saw gold as the money of “exploitation” and “oppression” by the Eastern financial establishment. The “free coinage of silver” would inflate the currency, decreasing its value and aiding those who had fallen destitute and in debt in the Panic of 1893. Wealth would be more equitably distributed from the wealthy Eastern elites to the struggling lower classes—not to mention to the special interests such as the silver-mine owners who stood to profit handsomely.
In Chicago’s marbled Palmer House hotel, the silver lobbyists had plotted for days in advance of 1896’s Democratic National Convention. They had found a sympathetic ear in Bryan, who promised to voice their concerns when he addressed the delegates. The silver-mine owners of Nevada and California were particularly keen to have the federal government suddenly purchasing vast reserves of silver, which would increase the price of the metal and boost their already hefty fortunes. As the “boy orator from the Platte,” referring to his home state of Nebraska, he had been ostentatious in refusing any money from the big trusts and lobbyists. His honesty became legendary. He fashioned himself a man of the people.
Yet Bryan and his key supporters in the Democratic Party were intimately connected with their own big-business trusts, which represented the real one percent of America at the time. Prominent among them were Senator James Jones of Arkansas, the head of the Democratic National Committee, and Richard Croker, the boss of New York City’s Tammany Hall Democratic machine. Croker had become ensnared in a major corruption probe, which revealed how he and his wife had profited to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars for protecting a monopoly on the ice trade, a booming business on the eastern seaboard. There was also John D. Clarke, a lawyer and lobbyist for the silver-mining interests, who were making millions from their mines in Nevada and California and stood to make millions more if only the U.S. government allowed its currency to be backed by silver as well as gold.
Not all of these interests shared the progressives’ entire worldview, but they were all certainly ready to back “free silver.” They understood that federal power brought with it the opportunity to make millions of dollars. If they pushed for Bryan, then he and his progressive allies could pick winners and losers. The winners would be anyone with a stake in silver.
With the influence of these moneyed interests, the election of 1896 fused together a populist progressive platform that radically redefined the Democratic Party. From the days of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson to the end of the Grover Cleveland administration, Democrats had believed in a small government. No more.
Bryan would go on to lose the 1896 election to Republican William McKinley, but he would boost the fortunes of his backers who successfully lobbied his fellow politicians at the local, state, and federal level. More important, Bryan would leave an indelible imprint on the Democratic Party. The new party of Jefferson and Jackson embarked on a far more radical course, one that would have an impact on the United States for generations to come and forever change how Americans viewed their rights, responsibilities, and relationships with government.
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PROFILE IN FEAR:
MARGARET SANGER AND THE WAR ON “UNDESIRABLES”
Corning, New York
November 1892
The vagrants’ collars are pulled high around their necks, a futile defense against the cold, slushy rain. As they rap on the door of the house before them, the two men stamp their feet to keep warm.
The door opens, and the warmth of a coal-fired stove pours over them. Light from candles and a lantern on the table reflect in the ice crystals that have formed in their dark, grizzled beards.
At first, the matronly woman in her early forties steps back to allow the visitors inside. But after scrutinizing the men, she has second thoughts and quickly moves to block their entry. There is an instant of silence, cut only by the splash of sleet on the stepping stones outside.
Behind the woman, the curious eyes of several children on the steps probe silently.
“Is the boss in?” one of the men asks.
“No, but I’m looking for him any minute.”
“We want something to eat,” the man says expectantly.
Not wavering in her command of the threshold, the woman stands for a moment longer, considering but silent. She is accustomed to these types of visitors: tramps and vagabonds, the “knights of the open road” who travel between New York City and odd jobs in the country.
Over the years, hundreds of men and dozens of children have found sanctuary in the house, with free access to food, milk, and warm beds, as well as glasses of whiskey always favored by their host. Anne has always borne it patiently, quiet in the wisdom that, despite having eleven children of their own, the Christian upbringing of her husband—which has evolved into the open adoption of socialism in the waves of reform sweeping the Eastern seaboard—simply wouldn’t allow him to turn away the needy.
They are living, breathing adherents of the social gospel. Jesus, they believe, has commanded them to share their property. That includes their home on a cold night like this. Were her husband here and not out of town on business, Anne knows he would admonish her for having second thoughts about inviting them in with a smile. Yet every instinct tells her to turn these men away.
Sensing the hesitation, and without further ceremony, the men push past Anne and into the house, heading toward the kitchen. On the stairs, one of the family dogs barks, and Margaret, the eldest of the children, strains to hold the hound back from its protective instinct.
Leaving the door open, Anne bristles and moves defensively toward the foot of the stairs, declaring crossly, “How dare you come into this house!”
Ignoring her, the men begin searching for food. One throws open cupboards while the other stuffs rolls into the pockets of his trench coat. On a small desk near the stairs, Anne notices her husband’s tools—a hammer and a chisel.
She looks up at little Margaret on the steps, takes a deep breath, and turns back to the men. “Toss! Beauty!” she shouts, beckoning the two dogs to come to her side. Hearing the fear in her voice, the dogs bark and snarl, leaping down the steps, lunging past the children and onto the backs of the men ransacking the cupboards.
Anne turns toward the stairs with a stern, desperate message. “Margaret, you keep those children there, no matter what occurs.”
The children watch their mother charge forward to chase the men away. The dogs snarl and bite; the men throw punches, food, and utensils to fend them off. Anne swings the hammer at one of them, landing a blow on his cheek, only to have him smash her across the face with the back of his clenched fist. She falls hard to the floor, just as the other man lands a kick in her side.
The children
cry out from the stairs, “No, Mother!” One of the dogs is felled with a blow from the hammer that Anne drops. The other retreats to the corner and barks and growls as the men grab what food they can and scamper out the door.
For an instant after they leave, it is impossibly silent. Snow and sleet splash in through the open door and onto the floor, mixing with spatters of blood and milk that spilled during the fracas.
On the stairs, the children cry quietly. Following orders, Margaret comforts them but doesn’t allow any to venture down, even to see if their mother is still alive. Time passes. The lone candle burns down and dies out.
As he approaches the home, Michael notices there are no lights in the windows. He sees the front door hanging open and immediately senses that something is very wrong.
He runs and lunges through the door, slipping to the floor in his haste. On his knees, he crawls to his wife, who is lying in a pool of blood.
Her breathing is raspy, and her body is cold to the touch, but she is alive.
“Margaret!” he yells toward the stairs. His daughter leaves her post at the top landing and crouches next to him.
She fetches a wet cloth from the sink, and they begin to clean Anne’s wounds. Michael shakes his wife lightly, trying to wake her. “Get the whiskey,” he instructs his daughter. She obeys and brings the bottle from a drawer in his desk.
Margaret helps to hold her mother’s mouth open as her father pours a dram into it. For a second, nothing happens. Then Anne coughs and gurgles and opens her eyes. She shivers in his arms as he holds her.
• • •
Anne developed a case of severe pneumonia over the ensuing days, turning a lifelong battle with tuberculosis into a crisis. From that day forward, she often had to lean against a wall or a counter to battle frequent bouts of coughing and labored breathing, and she endured seasonal cases of pneumonia, forcing bed rest off and on for the rest of her life. In the years that followed, vagrants coming to the Higgins household would only be served at the door and only if Michael was home.