11 January 2025

I ran across this story while researching the rise of Hitler. This story was published in the Indianapolis Times on 22 August 1932. It's crazy to be researching the rise of fascism in Germany while in the US thousands of women are being sterilized "voluntarily." It was a good thing though because you don't want people with bad genes breeding.

Speakers at the Third International Congress of Eugenics also said that black people were breeding at a high rate, but researchers figured that would slow down because the "negroes" wouldn't like living up north where it's cold.

To quote: "The climate is against him and tends to aggravate the lung troubles to which he seems to be peculiarly subject." (They set the heading wrong in the newspaper story for the Co-Eds section, it is wrong here as well).

Thousands of Women Seek Sterilization

Great Number Voluntarily Go Under Knife, Eugenics Congress Told.

NEW YORK, Aug. 22, - Sterilization by surgical operation is being sought voluntarily for both medical and eugenic reasons by many women, Dr. E. S. Gosney of Pasadena, Cal., told the Third International Congress of Eugenics at its meeting here today.

A recent estimate from Germany is that at least 100,000 women are sterilized there in private practice each year, he said; ant it seems likely that the number sterilized in private practice in the United States is greater.

The surgical procedure of sterilization is a major operation for a woman, requiring at least two weeks in bed, with medical care afterward.

Legal sterilization was advocated as the best and most practicable method for check the rapid increase in mentally unfit persons by Sir Bernard Mallett, K. C. B., of London, speaking before the congress.

Pauper Population Grows

However, Sir Bernard pointed out, as beyond reasonable dispute, that the race of "chronic paupers," breeding in and through successive generations, has a definite existence and that the community would be well rid of such undesirable hereditary stocks.

Signor Mussolini never may be able to review whole bridages of 6-foot grenadiers, such as used to delight the military eye of the father of Frederick the Great; but the troops who salute him today are taller than those who fought for Italian liberation in the seventies.

The increasing height of Italian men during the last half century was one of the points brought out in a statistical study presented at the meeting by Professor Marcello Boldrini of the Catholic University of Milan.

Italians not only are becoming taller, but the height of the male population is becoming more uniform.

Negroes Make Some Gain

Professor Boldrini ascribed the result partly to the complete blending of the three diverse racial stocks that constituted the original population of Italy, and partly to better economic conditions in the country during the recent past.

Negroes from Dixie, "going No'th" during the post-war decade, made a gain from the eugenic standpoint but probably only a temporary one. This summarizes in a sentence the conclusions of a study by Professor S. J. Holmes of the University of California, presented at the congress today.

Before the great wave of Negro migration from the South, Negro death rate was higher than Negro birth rate in northern states. During the last few years, births have shown a marked gain, and northern Negroes apparently are increasing through their own birth rate. This fact is due, Professor Holmes said, largely to the exceptionally favorable age composition of the Negro population.

However, the long-range prospects are not so bright for the Negro. Migration to the north brings the Negro into an unfavorable environment, the speaker pointed out.

Co-Eds Have More Children

The climate is against him and tends to aggravate the lung troubles to which he seems to be peculiarly subject.

Graduates of coeducational colleges have more children, and come nearer to replacing themselves as a population group than do graduates of colleges for men alone or for women alone.

This conclusion, reached by Caroline H. Robinson of Tunkhannock, Pa., after a statistical study of marriage and birth rates among 765 graduates of a co-educational college, was presented here today before the Third International Congress of Eugenics.