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Making the World Safe for Eugenics: The Eugenicist Harry H. Laughlin's Encounters with American Internationalism1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2013

Jason McDonald
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Abstract

Harry H. Laughlin's main claim to fame was as director of the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, from which position he exerted considerable influence upon early twentieth-century campaigns to restrict immigration and to institute compulsory sterilization of the socially inadequate. Laughlin also had an absorbing fascination for the idea of a single world government. Over the course of forty years, he produced a voluminous body of mostly unpublished work on the subject. In examining Laughlin's musings on internationalism, this article provides a glimpse into how a leading American eugenicist would have projected onto the world stage the policies he was zealously endeavoring to implement at the domestic level. Laughlin sent samples of his work to many of America's leading internationalists. Their responses to Laughlin's ideas reveal much about the character of internationalism in the United States during the era of World War I, especially the extent to which his racist and imperialist assumptions were shared by other members of the internationalist movement. Consequently, this article provides yet another example of how liberal and conservative impulses were neither easily distinguishable nor mutually exclusive during the Progressive Era.

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Essays
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The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , July 2013 , pp. 379 - 411
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Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2013 

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Footnotes

1

I would like to thank Hena Ahmed, Marc Becker, and Dan Mandell, all at Truman State University, Julio Decker at the University of Leeds, Kendrick Oliver, University of Southampton, and the journal's anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. I also thank archivists Amanda Langendoerfer and Jane Monson at Truman State University for assistance locating documents and images.

References

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34 Harry H. Laughlin to E. Parmalee Prentice, Jan. 19, 1918, file B5-1B-5, Laughlin Papers.

35 Laughlin, “Repairing Our Ship of State,” 3.

36 Harry H. Laughlin, “Our Faith in the Federal Idea and World Government,” [ca. 1918], 2, 6, file B5-1B-8, Laughlin Papers.

37 Harry H. Laughlin, “Continental Free Trade Regions and the World Government,” [1918], file B5-2B-2; the Editor, North American Review, to Laughlin, Apr. 19, 1918, file D2-1-5, Laughlin Papers.

38 Harry H. Laughlin, “The Common Government of the World: A Draft of a Political Constitution for Regulating the Major Aspects of International Contact, Drawn in Accordance with Proven Federal and Democratic Principles, Logically Applicable to the World as a Political Unit,” [ca. 1923], file D2-1-3, Laughlin Papers.

39 Harry H. Laughlin, “Draft of a Fundamental Instrument for the Common Government of the World,” (1932), file B5-3B-5, Laughlin Papers. Laughlin to James R. Angell, Dec. 22, 1931; Angell to Laughlin, Dec. 28, 1931; Laughlin to George Parmly Day, Jan. 16, 1932; Eugene A. Davidson to Laughlin, Jan. 25, 1932; Laughlin to Oxford University Press, Sept. 13, 1932; Hamilton J. Smith to Laughlin, Sept. 24, 1932; Ellen F. Shippen to Laughlin, Oct. 3, 8, 1932; Laughlin to Princeton University Press, Oct. 18, 1932; Paul G. Tomlinson to Laughlin, Oct. 25, 1932, all in file B5-1B-5, Laughlin Papers.

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47 Laughlin, “Principles and Materials,” 5.

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69 “Map of Continents Showing Continental Capitals,” (n.d.), file B5-3B-1, Laughlin Papers.

70 Laughlin to Grant, June 13, 1932.

71 Ibid.

72 Laughlin, “Our Faith in the Federal Idea,” 6.

73 Laughlin, “World Government: The Structure and Functioning of a Feasible Civil Government,” 17–18.

74 Harry H. Laughlin, “The Definition of an American,” (n.d.), file D-5-4:10, Laughlin Papers, 5–6.

75 Ibid., 5.

76 Davenport, “Harry Hamilton Laughlin,” 195; “Headquarters of the Cold Spring Harbor Home Defense Reserve,” (n.d.), file E1-3-10, Laughlin Papers.

77 Laughlin, “Repairing Our Ship of State,” 2–3; Harry H. Laughlin, “Correct Americanism: Federal Defense and State Police,” file C2-4-5, Laughlin Papers.

78 Laughlin, “Repairing Our Ship of State,” 1.

79 Laughlin to Angell, Dec. 22, 1931.

80 Moorfield Storey to Harry H. Laughlin, Mar. 7, 1919, file D4-6-9, Laughlin Papers.

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86 Storey to Laughlin, Mar. 7, 1919.

87 Oscar Newfang to Harry H. Laughlin, Nov. 27, 1918, file E2-5-5, Laughlin Papers.

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93 Emerson McMillin to Harry H. Laughlin, Apr. 8, 1919, file E2-5-18, Laughlin Papers.

94 James G. McDonald to Harry H. Laughlin, Apr. 15, 1919, file E2-5-18, Laughlin Papers.

95 Edward Cummings to Harry H. Laughlin, Mar. 7, 1919, file D4-6-9, Laughlin Papers.

96 The Editor, Atlantic Monthly, to Harry H. Laughlin, May 8, 1920, file E2-5-17, Laughlin Papers.

97 Robert Goldsmith to Harry H. Laughlin, Dec. 12, 1917; Laughlin to Goldsmith, Jan. 12, 1918; Laughlin to William H. Wadhams, Jan. 12, Feb. 1, Apr. 22, 1918; Wadhams to Laughlin, July 13, 1918, all in file E2-5-5, Laughlin Papers.

98 Harry H. Laughlin to William H. Wadhams, June 4, 1921; Wadhams to Laughlin, June 8, 22, 1921, file E2-5-5, Laughlin Papers.

99 Laughlin to Wadhams, Jan. 12, 1918.

100 Edward M. House to Harry H. Laughlin, Apr. 11, 1932, file B5-1B-5, Laughlin Papers.

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102 Talcott Williams, “Entangling Alliances Now, and in Washington's Day” in ibid., 82, 84.

103 Ibid., 83.

104 Ibid., 84.

105 Laughlin to Grant, June 13, 1932.

106 Ibid.