"Unnatural Selection: Intelligence Testing, Eugenics, and American Political Cultures"

Unnatural Selection: Intelligence Testing, Eugenics, and American Political CulturesAuthor(s): Patrick J. RyanSource: Journal of Social History, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Spring, 1997), pp. 669-685Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3789553 .

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UNNATURAL SELECTION: INTELLIGENCE TESTING,

EUGENICS, AND AMERICAN POLITICAL CULTURES

By Patrick J. Ryan Case Western Reserve University

The "myth ofthe menace ofthe feeble-minded" blamed early twentieth-century social problems on a rising tide of feeble-minded men and women who were said to be filling America's custodial institutions, while even greater numbers of unrecognized morons were loosed to reproduce in the streets.1 Conflicting interpretations of this myth have been central to the debates among historians of mentai retardation and psychological testing for over two decades.2 One school of historical research has stressed growing altruism in the care of the mentally retarded and portrayed the menace myth as an exceptional episode distinct from the origins of intelligence testing.3 They use the term "myth" to denote falsehood. For them, the menace myth was merely a bad theory proven wrong by interwar scientists. An opposing group of historians has claimed that knowledge about intelligence is constructed to meet the needs of social control.4 A "myth," for them, exposes something essential about the world views of its believers. They say the menace myth is a recurring theme in the enduring undemocratic defense of social hierarchy. This essay charts a new direction in the way we interpret the meaning of the menace myth by altering the dominant research questions, and under this new framework pursuing a case study ofthe relationships between

eugenics, testing technology, and youth custody policy in early twentieth-century Ohio.

Although the dichotomy between altruistic progress and social control of? fered vital energy to historical work for a time, partisans of both approaches have drawn broad conclusions from a narrow history of intellectuals without

properly working through the social and policy contexts.5 Fortunately, recent work by James W. Trent has provided a sharper sense of the impact that so?

cial policies have had upon the lives of the mentally retarded. Trent's main

argument that, "control and care merged as interrelated and interdependent factors in specialized services for retarded people," was an important attempt to

bridge the gap between progressive altruism and social control. However, he did

not consistently follow a narrative course that might allow one to see clearly how it is that care and control are part of the same social processes. When he examined the menace myth he retreated to the old framework of reformer motivations and argued that physicians and psychologists used the menace myth to

capitalize on xenophobic class fears. When they found it in their professional interests to abandon eugenic rhetoric in favor ofthe therapeutic language ofthe

mentai hygiene movement, the menace myth disappeared. Trent deftly exposed the political maneuvering of the philanthropists and scientists who advanced

the menace myth, but the concept of self-interest stripped his interpretation of

broader historical significance, while failing to further our understanding of how

difficult it has been to "care" for the mentally retarded in a non-"controlling,"

apolitical, scientific way.



670 journal of social history spring 1997

We now need to carry Trent's work further in order to re-shape the current

questions about the motivations of policy reformers and the truth content of theories. We should ask: what cultural biases and patterns of social relations were enforced and maintained by specific policy reforms and the creation of

diagnostic categories? While the social control school has tried to link power with culture and formal knowledge, it has been weakened by an inadequate set of

assumptions. Namely, these historians have too narrowly equated social control with the mechanisms of enforcing hierarchy while often silently assuming that individual freedom provides an unambiguous, ethically superior, alternative. We must abandon the attempt to differentiate altruism from control, because every social policy, regardless of our ethical judgement, is part of a greater system of

governance. Governance is social control. Instead of decrying it, we must more

carefully examine how competing ways of governance maintained the cultural biases and the social relations that gave these ways meaning and power.7

This essay reexamines the myth ofthe menace ofthe feeble-minded by show-

ing how Henry H. Goddard's eugenic interpretation of intelligence testing tech-

nology became part of Ohio's public policy, measuring his political troubles, and explaining the failure of his program to endure in terms of competing political cultures. The Ohio Bureau of Juvenile Research constitutes an im?

portant case study for several reasons. First, Goddard was a major figure who

brought intelligence testing to America and in 1910 achieved its medical ac-

ceptance. There has been considerable historical focus upon his career while he operated the research laboratory at Vineland Training School in New Jer- sey. Yet, following his departure from Vineland in 1917, his work has received scant historical attention. This is probably a product of the unsuccessful outcome of his Ohio venture. But, it is precisely this failure to make eugenics manifest through testing technology in public policy that can show us the subtle relationships among science, ideology, and policy in American soci?

ety. Second, the work previously published on the Ohio Bureau of Juvenile Research by Hamilton Cravens is empirically flawed to the point of distor- tion. While Cravens correctly noted the primary reason for his study was that, "[t] he Ohio Bureau of Juvenile Research provides an illuminating case [to exam? ine the] newly wrought marriage of public policy and psychological expertise," he did not complete the careful empirical work necessary to examine the application of Goddard's ideas to public policy. Instead, Cravens attempted to fit Goddard's work into the theme of scientific progress. He claimed that Henry Goddard had a "change of heart" and through his scientific work, repudiated the

myth ofthe menace ofthe feeble-minded. The record, however, shows that God? dard did not repudiate the menace myth while director ofthe Bureau, nor did he create new knowledge that changed his eugenic understanding of the menace.8

Contrary to the portrait of altruistic progress, this essay will give attention to the way Goddard's eugenics demanded a strong state in order to advance an

organic understanding of the social good. In shedding Lockean notions about the limits of state power, he and other eugenicists exposed themselves to liberal attacks, and in the American context this was their undoing. The Ohio Bureau of Juvenile Research floundered against three bedrock traditions of American

politics: individualism, a demand for plural authority structures, and a faith in



UNN ATURAL SELECTION 671

the domestic virtue of women. It was defeated by those who believed that mass incarceration of youths would empower the state to make an unnatural selection.

The following case study contains three parts: a brief description of Henry H. Goddard's eugenic prescriptions for using testing technology to address poverty and crime in industrial society; a discussion of how a small cadre of physicians, psychologists, and policy makers rallied to apply his work through the Ohio Bureau of Juvenile Research; and finally, an analysis of the political traditions that united the opposition which ultimately dismantled their eugenic plans.

Henry H. Goddard's widely read The Kallikak Family: A Study in Hereditary Feeble-Mindedness (1912) was his most important contribution to the myth of the menace ofthe feeble-minded. It was a genealogical study of two branches ofa sin?

gle family. One branch was said to have descended from an iliicit union between Martin Kallikak and a feeble-minded tavern girl which produced generations of

paupers, criminals, prostitutes, and drunkards; the other branch produced good citizens from Martin's marriage to a Quaker. When they invoked the menace

myth through The Kallikak Family and other texts, eugenicists were not describing low functioning idiots and imbeciles harmlessly pining away in sex-segregated institutions. Rather, they claimed that a substantial number of free Americans,

especially racial and ethnic minorities, did not have the inherited intelligence necessary to control their passions and that these higher-functioning morons were doomed to pauperism and crime. It was this understanding of social prob? lems that gave importance to Goddard's work for the Eugenics Record Office at Ellis Island prior to World War I where he found that forty percent of the immi?

grants were morons. Goddard was the first to see that intelligence testing solved the problem of identifying these defective individuals even though they lacked observable physiological pathology. Thus, he created a new word, "moron," to

designate this vast new class, a term accepted along with intelligence testing by American superintendents in 1910.9

Goddard was not content merely to report his findings to the scientific com?

munity. He was an activist who proclaimed, "[i]t is hereditary feeble-mindedness that is the basis of all problems," ... "and it is hereditary feeble-mindedness that we must attack." His plan of "attack" against the feeble-minded had two ba- sic parts. First, society should administer intelligence tests widely to children;

"By suitable mentai examination they must be discovered, and discovered as

early as possible." Then, through "colonization" (mass custody), as many of the

mentally defective as possible could be prohibited from procreating. Goddard

surmised that many adult paupers and criminals are of "such a high grade of de-

fectiveness that they never get into court and yet have feeble-minded children.

We cannot touch these adults. We must somehow get hold of their children." Goddard concluded that children were a more apt target for his eugenic de-

signs because parent-child-state authority relations in America stemmed from the Roman doctrine of parens patriae?the idea that the state has a type of emi- nent domain over children. He explained further in an essay for The Annals of the American Academy that, "such a plan is not dependent upon the consent of

the parents. Even though society finds itself unwilling forcibly to deprive the

parents of the feeble-minded child, there is still a possibility" for success. If a

parent refused to allow incarceration, the child "may be guarded by his teachers




and the probation officers or some person similar who keeps his eye upon such a child while he is at home." And, "upon the slightest indication that he is

going wrong, is thinking of marrying, or is in danger of becoming a parent out of matrimony, the State may then interfere, and take the child to the colony home."10 Goddard's opportunity to organize public policy arrived when Ohio Governor James M. Cox looked to him for "inspiration and guidance" in the effort to reform Ohio's system of youth custody. Therefore, in both 1912 and 1913, the Ohio Board of Administration sent the superintendent ofthe Ohio Institution for Feeble-Minded Youth, Edison J. Emerick, to consult Goddard at Vineland Training School with a directive to "securfe] information relative to the establishment of the Bureau of Juvenile Research." From these exchanges of information and training the Board of Administration drafted a bill to create the Bureau of Juvenile Research that was passed in 1913.11

Taking their cue from Goddard, the bureaucrats on the Board of Administra? tion were convinced that "more than 40 percent" of the juveniles at the state reformatories were "definitely feeble-minded?that it [was] folly to try and reform them ... they [were] not immoral; they [were] unmoral." Thus, they cooperated with superintendent Emerick, who attempted to keep his wards permanently. Together they expanded the institution's capacity from 1,614 in 1911 to 2,614 in 1922; the institution outgrew Ohio's population aged 5 to 24 by four-fold. The Bureau's role in this process was to find as many morons as possible, es?

pecially those who were passing as normal in reformatories and county homes. From 1918 through 1922, Bureau workers, visiting many types of child wel? fare agencies, found that 36.5 percent ofthe children were feeble-minded; 30.3

percent were psychopathic; they deferred diagnosis on 17.4 percent; 8 percent were syphilitic, and only 4-5 percent were normal. Given these statistics, if the Bureau was allowed to control custody decisions and hand over children to su?

perintendent Emerick, there would have been a wave of custodial commitment that likely would have increased the pressure on the legislature for new facilities to house feeble-minded youth.12

In order to deal with so massive a problem, the Board of Administration at?

tempted to acquire general authority over the custody of all children entering the

system of "public institutional care and guardianship." Had this phrase passed into law, the Bureau would have been able to alter custodial policy on a large scale, free from the jurisdiction of county courts. But the legislature changed the crucial word "public" in the bill to "state." The alteration was crucial be? cause a large number of Ohio's juvenile wards were in county children's homes; county homes were public, but not state institutions. Nevertheless, those behind the Bureau still believed they could shape it into a giant clinic, "where all the children from the Juvenile Courts shall be sent as wards of the state, ... and if found to be feeble-minded, they will be sent to an institution for segregation. Their destiny will not be left to the judgement of the Juvenile Courts." Thus, they hoped the Bureau could circumvent the county juvenile courts' evolving control over custody of troubled youth. When confronted with funding difficulties and a lack of statutory mandate to control juvenile wards, Goddard's cohorts nevertheless moved ahead in an attempt to exercise authority "commonly vested

by law in certain judiciaries." The Board used its control over the state's juvenile reformatories to commandeer adequate housing and equipment for the Bureau.



UNNATURAL SELECTION 673

Goddard and his followers gave public speeches, wrote annual reports, and sent out news releases claiming that the authority of scientific expertise should determine youth custody. However, their attempt to build broader political support for their eugenic visions not only failed, but served to rally direct opposition. As the Bureau ventured into the open fray of policy implementation, Goddard and his cohorts were ambushed by widespread opposition united under the traditions of individualism, domestic virtue, and local authority.13

The opposition to the Bureau began when Rupert U. Hastings, superintendent of the Ohio Boys' Industrial School, resisted the imposition of the Bureau's facilities upon the state reformatories by stating that "[t]he interested observer" could give conclusions as valid as those of the psychologists. In stark contrast to the Board of Administration, Hastings claimed that testing technology did not offer special knowledge and it should not be given special authority. His assessment of Binet-testing warned that,

Too much credence should not be given these results of rather hasty experi- ments ... a long journey of investigation and scientific research must be trav- eled to reach that standard of excellence the public has reason to demand. At this time we feel certain that estimates of the situation must depend greatiy upon the

personal equation ofthe investigator.14

Hastings bluntly told Goddard, "To be frank with you Doctor, it will not be

convenient at any time, for any worker to come to the school to make such

examination of any of our boys." He was hostile because fundamental beliefs were

at stake. In his 1913 essay, "The Merit System," Hastings explained that when

a boy entered the school he was "plainly told that" his length of stay "depends

wholly upon himself." If the release of wards was subject to the outcome of

intelligence tests, this promise was in vain. His method was futile if good social

behavior was subject to either behavioral reactions or genetic make-up. Hastings believed in the individualistic credo that "the desire to succeed ... is planted somewhere in every breast." He stressed that "there is hardly a boy who does not

respond if you appeal to his sense of reason." The primacy of individual agency and self-discipline in Hastings' understanding ofthe causes of delinquency made

the hierarchical assumptions within Goddard's work especially abhorrent to

him.15

Hastings believed the Bureau's presence was "wholly detrimental to good dis?

cipline within the institution," and he proved to be a powerfiil enemy. After

two years of verbal protest against the Bureau, he discovered that the statutes

governing the Boys' Industrial School might be construed to make the Bureau's

location at the reformatory illegal. The Bureau had received all types of children

at the reformatories' facilities, whereas according to statutory law, only "delin-

quent" youth could stay at the reformatories. Hastings forced a legal resolution

ofthe conflict by removing three Hardin county juveniles from the reformatory,

returning them to their county, and thus creating a temporary custody crisis for

Hardin county. The Board of State Charities intervened and agreed to accept the

children, but it took some time to place them in private homes. During the in-

terim the Board of State Charities "had no way to charge back to Hardin county the necessary expense for maintenance of these children" as was done when

children were committed directly to them. As a result both the county juvenile




court and the Board of State Charities asked Ohio's attorney general to give an opinion as to the legality of sending children who were not officially "delin-

quent" to the reformatory-based facilities ofthe Bureau of Juvenile Research.16 The Board of Administration believed that the Bureau was independent of the laws of the reformatory regardless of its physical location. This reading of the law was problematic because it ignored an important distinction between "de-

pendency" or "delinquency" that was in the statutes governing juvenile courts.

"Dependent" youth had never been forced to stay at the reformatory. Thus, the

legal rub came if a child was both dependent and suspected of moronity. Which classification system had priority in a case of mixed status? If it was diagnostic category, then Goddard's group would have access to many more youths.17

The state Attorney General gave priority to the dependency-delinquency framework over diagnostic status. He wrote that, "estabiishing the bureau of

juvenile research at the Boys' Industrial School and at the Girls' Industrial School insofar as it related to dependent and neglected children was not only without authority of law, but in direct opposition to the established practice and specific provision of law relative to the care of such children, and therefore without force and effect." Why was it inappropriate for dependent youths to be on the premises of the reformatory? The answer is implicit in how the Attorney General understood behavior. A delinquent was one who was "guilty of immoral conduct." On the contrary, by law, a dependent child was "found in a house of ill fame, [or] ... by reason of neglect, cruelty, or depravity on the part of its

parent ... is prevented from receiving a proper education." This new opinion re- enforced the primacy of individual agency as an organizing principle of juvenile justice, because it subordinated diagnostic statuses from the new psychology to the traditional philosophy of free will and moral responsibility. Goddard had

claimed, "the causes [of delinquency] cannot be discovered by merely asking the child why he did it." Herein lay one aspect of eugenics that made it so radical in the context of American political traditions fixated on individual agency and choice. Not only would tests predict pauperism and criminal behavior, but in their application to public policy, low scores would be taken as the functional

equivalent of dependent and delinquent actions. The Attorney General had not only robbed the Bureau of housing, but by reinforcing the importance of moral culpability, he helped make the juvenile courts a less hospitable arena for

eugenics. 8

Without a home, the Bureau of Juvenile Research nearly ceased to function in 1917. The Board temporarily gave the Bureau part of its own office space; then in

April Emerick housed it in the laboratory of the Institution for Feeble-Minded Youth. Henry H. Goddard assumed directorship of the Bureau on May 1, 1918 and began accepting children at the facilities of the state hospital in Columbus in January 1919. Observation cottages were completed by the end of the year and the legislature was generous with funding for the next two years. These

important gains rebuilt the Bureau, but they were not enough to put Goddard's

lofty plans within reach, because the individualism that united the opposition was strengthened by maternalism.19

Historian Molly Ladd-Taylor recently defined "maternalism" as the combina- tion of beliefs,




(1) that there is a uniquely feminine value system base on care and nurturance; (2) that mothers perform a service to the state by raising citizen-workers; (3) that women are united across class, race, and nation by their common capacity for motherhood and therefore share a responsibility for all the world's children; (4) that ideally men should earn a family wage to support their "dependent" wives and children at home.20

The Child Welfare Division ofthe Ohio Board of State Charities exhibited a maternalistic bias in its placement of children with foster families and orphanages, and through its regulation of children's institutions following 1912. By 1921 the Division had developed five "principles" of institutional inspection: one, accept only children where neglect in the family is documented. Two, formulate a plan to return the child to a family. Three, do corrective medical work. Four, send children to school and church. Five, "[s]trive to make the daily life ofthe children

approximate the family ideal in order that their individuality may be developed and that they may escape institutionalization." Harry H. Howett, a visitor for the Board of State Charities, wrote that his work "improv[ed] the moral well-being of the state" when he "transformed individuals" by "rehabilitating broken homes." C.V. Williams, director ofthe Division, peddled maternalism when he spoke to a crowd filling the Sunday school room of the Presbyterian church in Coshocton, Ohio. Williams proclaimed that, "[e]very child is entitled to a chance in life," but that a fair chance depended upon the home; and thus, "every effort should be made toward the reformation of parents so that the home might be kept intact."

Harry H. Howett extended the same line of thought when he was director of the Division in 1921. It was, "[t]he infinite patience ofthe majority of our [foster] mothers," that was the Division's salvation. The monetary compensation these women received was not the source of their commitment, but "[t]heir reward is the knowledge that because of the service which they render so heroically, hundreds of children are saved each year from the blight of institutional life." The Child Welfare Division did not shape their role on a complete rejection of hierarchical thinking in favor of unfettered individualism, because their mater? nalism demanded unequal roles for family members based on sex and age and

claimed to put the good of the whole family above each constituent member.

However, unlike the hierarchy of eugenics, maternalism's hierarchical cultural biases and social relations complemented individualism on the part of adult men in the economy and polity by serving to insulate the vicious implications of com-

petition from moral criticism. Given their maternalistic cultural biases it is not

surprising that the Board of State Charities responded to the call to support the

Bureau by announcing that, "[i]n the opinion of the Board [of State Charities] it is worthy of consideration whether the vital objects ofthe [Bureau of Juvenile Research] cannot be attained in a simpler method and with less expense."21

The Division of Child Welfare received 1,981 children for placement between

April 1914 and January 1922. Although "physically and mentally unfit" chil? dren were a concern, the Division was not persuaded that half of all dependent and delinquent youth were unmoral. The Division identified under the "primary cause of dependency" only 34 cases (1.7 percent) due to feeble-mindedness be?

tween 1914and 1922;while 1,522 cases (76 percent) ofthe cases were attributed




either to the death or to irresponsible behavior of the parents. When they gave tests, far fewer children were diagnosed with feeble-mindedness. Of 55 children selected for learning problems who were examined for the Division by psychologist Rudolf Printner from 1914 to 1917, only 9 were declared feeble-minded. 10 of these 55 were also examined by the Bureau of Juvenile Research; in 7 of these 10 cases the Bureau found Printer's "backward" or "borderline" diagnosis to be too cautious, and declared the child feeble-minded. A Christmas Day press release from the Division printed by The Columbus Dispatch in 1915 declared

"Many Children Are Given Out As Christmas Gifts: Seventy-seven Families Are Made Happy by Board of State Charities." Many of the children placed by the Children's Division had family histories akin to the Kallikaks. From God? dard's perspective "giv[ing] out" such children courted disaster by spreading bad stock into heaithy families and thus into society.22

Maternalism was also found in the words of superintendents, matrons, and

juvenile court judges, all of whom drew authority from the county level of gov? ernment, who thus had a double reason to protect themselves from the central

planning and eugenics proposed by the Bureau. The child welfare legislation of 1913 had made the counties responsible for the support of inmates at the Insti? tution for Feeble-Minded Youth, while the costs of inmate maintenance at the industrial schools remained to be paid by the state. If the Bureau was allowed to control custody decisions and hand over children to Emerick at the Institute for Feeble-Minded Youth, there would have been a loss of county autonomy over

expenditures for state custody.23 Thus, as representatives of counties, juvenile court judges had significant fiscal reasons to resist subordination to centralized state psychological recommendations. The Franklin county judge was concerned that, "the expense [of commitment] was not justified." It is telling that Ohio ju? venile courts consulted the Bureau in a meager 472 cases between 1918 and 1920. Extrapolating from the Cuyahoga county juvenile court, and the percent? age of Cuyahoga's population for all of Ohio, the Bureau was being consulted

by the judges concerning less than 2 out of every 100 youths that came before the juvenile courts. Thus, most judges ignored the Board of Administration's insistence that "all minors" who might need state guardianship be sent to the Bureau for examinations to determine placement. The dearth of work with the courts was not a result ofthe Bureau's troubles securing stable housing; if judges had desired the opinions of the Bureau's workers, they would have asked them into their courts. In fact, it was very rare for a judge to call for their expertise. In all of Ohio, the Bureau recorded only 236 cases of in-court work between 1918 and 1920.24

Judges were protecting local fiscal autonomy by keeping the Bureau at a dis? tance. But juvenile courts also distributed Mothers' Pensions in Ohio?a social

policy laden with the maternalist ideology that was antithetical to the menace myth. According to George S. Addams, a chief architect of Ohio's Juvenile courts who presided over Cleveland's juvenile court from 1905 to 1926, a mother had a right to a pension because "her services in rearing children are performed for the State; she is caring for its future citizens and doing it as no one else can." Lewis E. St. John, a juvenile court judge in Troy, Ohio, told an audience that the court should work with county homes to "conserv[e] the family tie, I want to say in [my] mind this is of inestimable value, for the home is the true American institution




of government" Given these opinions from the bench, it is perhaps unsurpris- ing that even when intelligence tests were increasingly used by child welfare

agencies after World War I, the Bureau continued to be utilized sparingly. For

example, Judge Addams' Child Guidance Clinic administered eight-fold more tests in Cleveland than did the Bureau. So too, when Western Reserve Univer-

sity's School of Applied Social Sciences surveyed social agencies in 1926 they found that 1,590 "psychometric" tests had been administered to Clevelanders

(at least 76 percent of these tests were given to minors). However, only 19 tests

(1.2 percent) had been administered by the Bureau of Juvenile Research.25

Although the Bureau managed to catalog five thousand cases prior to 1917, most of these were group field surveys. After 1917, survey work continued to account for over four-fifths of the Bureau's work until at least 1922. Field sur?

veys were occasions when the Bureau received permission from the principal or

superintendent or matron to impose tests on the entire institution. They were

traveling shows that made up part of a failed attempt to build wider support for

eugenics. The suspicion that met the Bureau's visitors was betrayed in a letter sent to the county homes. In the letter Goddard tried to sooth "misconceptions" about the motives ofthe Bureau's survey work. He apologetically explained that "the Bureau has no theories to prove and no pet plans to carry through." Al?

though Goddard contended that the Bureau was merely "seek[ing] the facts,"

many superintendents and matrons were active participants in the 1918 State Conference on Charities and Correction, where he had instructed them that not only were penal institutions frequented by unmoral defective delinquents, but "what is more striking the same is largely true ofthe orphanages and the chil? dren's homes ... it is very doubtful if there is a children's home in the state 50 per cent of whose inmates ever make good." Goddard's late attempt to lower anxiety about his visitors must have been quite transparent to institutional heads, and it suggests that they were perceptiveiy skeptical of the Bureau's intentions.26

The leaders of county homes and private orphanages were not merely con? cerned with institutional prerogatives and autonomy. Often they expressed in-

dividualist and maternalist beliefs incongruent with Goddard's menace myth. In November 1914 at a conference on dependent children sponsored by the State Board of Charities, Superintendents from Eaton, Cincinnati, Worthing- ton, Lebanon, Springfield, Tifiin, Maumee, Akron, and Norwalk spoke of keeping children of the poor out of institutions as an ideal. Reverend A.E. Harford of the Methodist Children's Home in Worthington emphasized "the importance of training the unfortunate child, handicapped by a bad heredity (whatever that

may signify) and by a vicious environment" in order to produce future citizens who would responsibly exercise freedom. He offered two principles to his fellow

superintendents and matrons for placing-out children. "A good mother should never be deprived of her child, or the child deprived of its mother simply because of misfortune. Such children should be detained in the home with the hope of

rehabilitating the family." In his second principle Harford acknowledged that

some children, due to "defect, either real of imaginary, in their appearance or

make-up, cannot be placed with advantage and who can be better fitted for the

great responsibilities of life in the cottage home in which the family ideal is

carried out." That Harford twice qualified himself in reference to heredity and

defectiveness suggests he had doubts about the much publicized menace myth.




According to those who ran the institution, an orphanage was a surrogate family for teaching citizenship even to imperfect children, rather than a prophylactic against their participation in society.27

Mrs. F. D. Saunders, a matron from Akron, described the "perfect matron" in squarely maternalist terms; "the efficient matron is a good housekeeper, is

economical, discreet, low-voiced, self-controlled and pleasant." The matron should raise the children in the permissive liberal tradition:

[She] should devise methods of punishment other than the strap or stick, recogniz- ing the truth that although it takes much more time and thought, it is far better to

help a child to master himself than to master the child. She should be interested in the children's amusements, help them with their play and not scorn to play with them. She should not humiliate a child publicly, for a child's self-respect is a

precious possession.28

In the face of this profound and widespread rejection of Goddard's ideas and

eugenic program for troubled youth, his long-time champion, the Board of Ad? ministration sounded a pragmatic, if not ideological, retreat in 1920 when it announced to all juvenile court judges that "it doubt[ed] very much the advis-

ability of making ... [the Bureau] a sieve or filter for all juvenile cases." To be

sure, the members of the Board looked forward to a future when they would "extend the activities ofthe Bureau so that it may be possible to take all juvenile commitments," but "at least at present ... [only] cases where there enters an ele- ment of doubt, particularly the so called borderline cases, and the cases showing a

tendency to become repeaters" should be sent to the Bureau. The following year Goddard's troubles were compounded when an internecine professional battle broke out at the Bureau. He resigned and took a post as a professor at Ohio State

University in 1922.29 After Goddard's departure, the menace myth remained an important theme

of the Bureau's work. Edison Emerick came out of retirement to direct the Bu? reau in 1924. The goal of mass incarceration had been squashed, but the Bureau continued to utilize the menace myth to make recommendations throughout the 1920s and beyond. For example, in 1932 the Bureau examined a woman who was a "[h]igh grade moron, Goddard classification. Somewhat unstable, So-

cially incompetent. An example of the so called defective delinquent." After

pursuing the incarceration of this woman intermittently for thirteen years, the Bureau's psychologist Francis Maxfield sounded frustrated words in the recom- mendation to the court, "commit to the Institution for Feeble-minded, or failing that sterilization should be considered, At least try to get something done."^0

Early in the twentieth century, a small group of Ohio physicians, psychologists, and bureaucrats rallied around Henry H. Goddard's eugenics-based interpreta? tion of intelligence testing. This cadre of experts hoped to wipe out poverty and crime within a few generations by instituting a public policy whereby all juvenile wards would receive psychological examinations. Those found to be mentally defective by means of intelligence testing were to be permanently "colonized"




to large institutions so as to prevent their procreation. Thus, the Ohio Bureau of

Juvenile Research was created in 1913, and throughout the twenties the desire to apply breeding practices to humans (eugenics) was the driving force behind its work. However, the articulation of eugenic social goals and even the creation of a state bureau dedicated to these goals were ineffectual without the widespread hierarchical political culture that Goddard's eugenics required. First, crucial legislative editing in committee curtailed the original jurisdiction proposed for the Bureau in 1913. Because the legislature had not given Goddard's group the tremendous money and authority that it had originally proposed, superintendents of county homes and county juvenile court judges were in a position to resist visitations and recommendations from the Bureau's field workers. The cru? cial blow in the struggle was delivered by an Attorney General's opinion in 1916. The Attorney General not only denied the Bureau the housing that was vital to their work, but he simultaneously supported an individualistic framework of

moral responsibility over diagnostic categories. Local leaders had a fiscal incentive to support county juvenile courts over

centralized state authority. A policy goal of mass incarceration would be funded

through county budgets and would require increased local taxes. In sum, eugen? ics as a social policy required a strong measure of central planning in order to be

implemented; central planning was a precarious proposition within the plural authority structures of American government. Persistent localism fit well with

the Attorney General's support of county juvenile courts; rejecting state bureau-

cracy was amenable to both individualistic and localistic ends. So too, county

juvenile court judges generally opposed the Bureau in favor of family placement and short-term local institutions. The judges formed relationships with

a variety of child care experts. Many of these professionais stressed the virtues

of motherhood and a maternalist family environment. Ultimately, Goddard's

hierarchical eugenics-based custody program sank amid the dominant currents

within American political traditions. The Bureau of Juvenile Research and the myth of the menace of the feeble-

minded were the institutional and narrative components of a particular way to govern and control society. But this tells us too little. The more important

questions are: what political values were the menace myth and the Bureau in-

strumental in advancing and how did they fare? The conclusion here is that

the menace myth and the Bureau that embodied it were so uncompromisingly hierarchical that they failed to make the concessions to individualism needed

to thrive in early twentieth-century American politics. Ironically, the Bureau

also ran afoul of a competing hierarchical political institution?the maternalist

family. The Bureau's extreme statism in the realm of child custody could not fail

to challenge the hierarchical power that parents exercise over children. Whereas

the hierarchical order of the maternalist family was cloaked in a separate sphere hidden from potential value conflicts with individualism in economy and polity, the Bureau attempted to exercise hierarchical control of society through children

by the instrument of state power. This made the ideological tensions between

hierarchy and individualism visible?with poor results for Goddard, the Bureau, and the menace myth.

This interpretation ventures beyond understanding the menace myth as an

artifact of professional or even class interests, because it has shown that within




the policy arena of youth custody, the myth played an important role in contests over the essential nature of American governance. It offers conditional support for the claim that intelligence testing lends itself to the maintenance of hier? archical political culture. However, the Bureau's fate illustrates the precarious, if enduring, position of hierarchy in American society which the social control school has neglected to properly address. Eugenicists could not dictate the uses of testing technology because many others employed testing to suit non-eugenic agendas that were grounded in a more ambiguous mix of cultural biases and social relations.

Department of History Cleveland, OH 44106-7107

ENDNOTES

1. According to Mark Haller, the menace myth was "the most important aspect of the early eugenics movement in America." Haller found that "virtually every state" produced an association or campaign to awaken the public and policy makers to the menace. See Mark H. Haller, Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in American Thought (New Brunswick, 1963): 96, 110. For works that give solid descriptive accounts of treatment, see Peter L. Tyor and Leland V. Bell, Caringfor the Retarded in America: A History (Westport, CT, 1983): 105-122; Philip R. Reilly, The Surgical Solution: A History oflnvoluntary Sterilization in the United States (Baltimore, 1991).

For a recent revival of the menace myth read the first pages of Richard J. Hermstein and Charles A. Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York, 1994), and then compare Herrnstein and Murray to Henry H. Goddard, "The Menace of the Feeble-Minded," Pediatrics 23 (1911): 1-8. For other variations in the debates over the political implications of intelligence see Walter Lippmann and Lewis Terman in The New Republic 32 (1922): 213-15, 246-248, 275-277, 328-330; Ibid, 33 (1922) 1-15; Arthur Jensen, "How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?" Harvard Educational Review 39 (1969): 1-123; Richard J. Herrnstein, l.Q. ln the Meritocracy (Boston, 1971); Leon Kamin, The Science and Politics ofl.Q. (New York, 1974); N. J. Block and Gerald Dworkin, eds. The IQ Controversy: CriticalReadings (New York, 1976).

2. Throughout this essay I will use terms that might be offensive to contemporary readers, such as "feeble-minded," "moron," "defective delinquent," "idiot," and "imbecile" when the need for precise historical meaning requires them. These terms have no current clinical status and using them is not intended to endorse them in any way.

3. For the best work claiming that interwar scientists undermined the empirical basis of eugenics, see Hamilton Cravens, The Triumph of Evolution: American Scientists and the Heredity-Environment Controversy, 1900-1941 (Philadelphia, 1978); and Haller, Eugen? ics: 110, 117-130, 141-143. More recently, this school has claimed that eugenics and psychological testing were as unrelated as "Oaks and Cacti." Raymond Fancher informed his readers of The Intelligence Men: Makers ofthe IQ Controversy (New York, 1985) that intelligence testers who wrote eugenic tracts were merely producing "propaganda" that should not be confused with their work as scientists (115). See Reviews in American His? tory 14 (1986): 104-109, where Hamilton Cravens warned researchers against "lump[ing] mentai testing under the rubric of'eugenics,'" because, "as particular historical phenom- ena eugenics and mentai testing had different histories in both American and Britain." So too, the essays in Michael M. Sokal, ed. Psychological Testing in American Society, 1890- 1930 (New Brunswick, 1987), largely dismissed the importance of eugenics, racism, and




nativism, and the volume contained only one essay (out of 8), by Franz Samelson, that ventured beyond an internalist biographical approach.

4. Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure ofMan claimed that the menace myth was part of an enauring undemocratic defense of social hierarchies that began, as does his book, with Plato's RepubUc. By the early 1990s, Nicole Hahn Rafter and JoAnne Brown had followed Gould's central claim with a more sophisticated social construction theory of knowledge and a more fleshed out interpretation of the social motivations of those who advocated for intelligence testing and eugenics. Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York, 1981); Brian Evans and Bernard Waites, l.Q. And Mental Testing: An Unnatural Scknce and its Social History (London, 1981); John David Smith, Mmds Made Feeble: The Myth and Legacy ofthe KaUikaks (Rockville, MD, 1985); Daniei Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses ofHuman Heredity (New York, 1985): 70-112; Nicole Hahn Rafter ed., White Trash: The Eugenic Family Studies, 1887-1919 (Boston, 1988); JoAnne Brown, The Definition of a Profession: The Authority ofMetaphor in the History of Intelligence Testing, 1890-1930 (Princeton, 1992).

5. For example, scholars as diverse as JoAnne Brown and Hamilton Cravens share this short-coming. Cravens has made less explicit claims about power and meaning. Nevertheless, his meta-narrative of progressive synthesis between hereditarian and en- vironmental thought that he dubbea "the triumph of evolution" quietly replaced solid empirical work in his study of Henry Goddard. JoAnne Brown concluded that it was "through the psychologists' semantic appeals to the structures of corporate capitalism and constitutional democracy that those structures became thoroughly implicated in the intelligence testing project." This statement was an assumption, rather than a conclusion derived from the evidence presented by Brown. She did not deal with the responses from other professionals, businessmen, and policy makers. Gould committed the same errors when he continually assumed that arguments "under the banner of science" had rela-

tively unmitigated policy outcomes. See pages 11-12, 72, 155, 181, 285, 224, 233, and 293 ror examples of unverified assumptions about social policy in the Mismeasure ofMan. Hamilton Cravens, "Applied Science and Public Policy: The Ohio Bureau of Juvenile Research and the Problem of Juvenile Delinquency, 1913-1930," in Psychobgical Testing in American Society, 1890-1930 (London, 1987): 158-194; Brown, The Definition of a

Profession: 8-11.

6. James W. Trent, Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Mental Retardauon in the United States (Berkeley, 1994): 3 (see note 3), 181-182, 277. For another work that followed

policy with great care see, Paul David Chapman, Schools and Sorters: Lewis M. Terman, Applied Psychology, and the Intelligence Testing Movement, 1890-1930 (New York, 1988).

7. As a corollary, this essay also rejects the question of whether one ought to believe that mental retardation is "real" or merely "constructed," because a diagnostic category is historically real the moment it is applied to people. My departure from progress versus control has been informed by the work of Mary Douglas, Aaron Wildavsky, Richard Ellis, and Michael Thompson. For this essay the dynamics between two cultural traditions are

significant: hierarchy and individualism. In tneory, hierarchical political culture requires a high level of social stratification and gives priority to the group over the individual. In? dividualism is characterized by both low social constraints and low group identification. It is important to note that individualism and hierarchy are not the only political traditions in American society, and thus there are important political voices that go unheard in this case study. Mary Douglas, In the Active Voice (London, 1982); Michael Thompson, Richard Ellis, and Aaron Wildavsky, Cultural Theory (Boulder, CO, 1990); Richard J. Ellis, American Political Cultures (New York, 1993); and Dennis J. Coyle, ed., Politics, Policy, and Culture (San Francisco, 1994).

8. See Cravens, "Applied Science and Public Policy." Although his interpretation of

Henry Goddard's work fits neatly into the idea of an environment/heredity synthesis that is offered in The Triumph of Evolution, Goddard repeatedly emphasized eugenics in his




public statements between the wars. See "Imbecile Peril and the Cure," Cleveland Press, 12 December 1921, in Mentai Care-Cleveland and Cuyahoga Co, Newspaper Clippings at the Cleveland Press Collection, Cleveland State University, Cleveland; Henry H. Goddard, "In Defense of the Kallikak Study,

" Science 95 (June 1942): 574-576. "The Subnormal Mind Verses the Abnormal," did admit that the Binet test was overrated, but it retained the core hereditarian message. See Henry H. Goddard, "The Subnormal Mind Verses the Abnormal," The Journal of Abnormal Psychology (April 1921): 47-54; Henry H. Goddard, Juvenile Delinquency (New York, 1923); Henry H. Goddard, "The Problem of the Psychopathic Child," American Journal oflnsanity 127 no. 4 (April 1921): 510-516.

9. Late nineteenth-century superintendents had also created words for a third class of mentai retardation such as "moral imbeciles." See Martin W. Barr, Mentai Defectives: Their History, Treatment, and Training (1904; reprint, New York, 1974): 129. But, Goddard's tests solved the problem of finding a diagnostic procedure that was repeatable and appeared more scientific than the mere idiosyncratic judgement of experienced workers. See Rafter, White Trash: 74; Henry H. Goddard, The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity ofFeeble- Mindedness (New York, 1912): 11-12; Leila C. Zenderland, "Henry Herbert Goddard and the Origins of American Intelligence Testing" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1986); Steven A. Gelb, "Social Deviance and the 'Discovery' ofthe Moron," Disability, Handicap, & Society 2, no. 3 (1987): 247-258; Henry H. Goddard, "Mentai Levels of a Group of Immigrants," Psychological Bulletin 14 (February 1918): 68-69. Henry H. Goddard, "Mentai Tests and the Immigrant," Journal of Delinquency 2 (September 1918): 243-79.

10. Henry H. Goddard, Feeble-Mindedness: Its Causes and Consequences (New York, 1914): 562-566, 573, 585-590. Goddard consistently opposed euthanasia on moral grounds. He was reluctant to place too much emphasis on sterilization because he re- alized that it was "violently opposed by many people whose sentiments are offended." (566) He felt marriage restrictions and public education would help, but be inadequate. (564-565) He most consistently advocated increased custodial institutions and earlier identification. Henry H. Goddard, "The Elimination of Feeble-Mindedness," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 37 (March 1911): 513; Henry H. Goddard, "The Basis For State Policy," The Survey 27 (March 1912): 1853-1855, where he demanded that, "[t]he only thing for the state to do is to establish stations where these cases may be all carefully and critically studied, so that the courts and other authorities may be able to act intelligently upon the facts." "There is only one answer. They must be removed? They must be segregated, colonized_" On the parent-child-state au? thority relationship see Joseph Kett, Rites ofPassage: Adolescence in America 1790 to the Present (New York, 1977): 132; John Sutton, Stubborn Children: Controlling Delinquency in the United States 1640-1980 (Berkeley, 1988): 11.

11. Edison Emerick attended Goddard's training lectures at Vineland in 1912. Board of Administration, Annual Report, 1914, 28-29. For the relationship between James Cox and Goddard see Hoyt Landon Warner, Progressivism in Ohio 1897-1917 (Columbus, 1964): 387. See note 6 on page 412. Edison J. Emerick, "The Problem of the Feeble- Minded," Publications ofthe Ohio Board of Administration no. 5 (1915): 11; Ohio Board of Administration, Proceedings, 14 May 1912; 18 June through 1 September 1913, OHS- 467, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; Ohio Board of State Charities, Minutes of the Board of State Charities, 14 January 1913, OHS-2495, Ohio Historical Society. For the Board's endorsement of Goddard's work see Ohio Board of Administration, Annual Report, 1914,26-31.

12. Emerick provided the Board of Administration with the study to support this claim between 1912 and 1913. Feeble-minded juvenile wards did not obtain adult legal status as they reached the age of majority. This gave the institution increased discretion over who should be released, and Emerick instituted a standard procedure that "an inmate of [the institution for the feeble-minded] shall not be released, either conditionally or absolutely unless" the Board and the superintendent judged the inmate "not [to] be detrimental




to the welfare of society." Of course, since "every feeble-minded person is potentially a pauper or a criminal," and if possible they should be kept, "as long as they live" the goal was massive permanent incarceration. Therefore, the Institution for Feeble-Minded Youth's population grew by 62 percent while the age group of the population most likely to be taken into custody grew by only 14.5 percent. Edison J. Emerick, "Segregation of the Mentally Defective," Ohio Bulletin ofCharities and Correction 19 no. 2 (1913): 10-20; Emerick, "The Problem of the Feeble-Minded"; Ohio Board of Administration, Annual Report, (1914): 30; Ohio General Code (Page 1920), see. 2083-2085; The Ohio Law Bulletin 50 (1905): 135; Ohio, Circuit Court Reports, NewSeries, 6 (1905): 81-86; Board of Administration, Proceedings, 16 April 1913, Ohio Historical Society; Henry H. Goddard as quoted by Edison J. Emerick, Annual Report ofthe Institution for Feeble-Minded Youth, 1913,21; Henry H. Goddard as quoted byJosephP. Shaffer, Ohio Board of Administration, Annual Report, 1914, 26; H. H. Shirer, "Report of Special Committee on Jails, Lockups and Police Stations," Bulletin of Charities and Correction 20 no. 1 (January 1914): 45; Board of Administration, Annual Reports, 1911; Ohio, Department of Public Welfare, Annual Reports, 1923; United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. Historical Statistics of the United States from Colonial Times to 1970, Part l (Washington D.C., 1975): 33; Goddard, Juvenile Delinquency: 55; Henry H. Goddard, "The Bureau of Juvenile Research: Review ofthe Work, 1918-1920," Publications no. 19 (February, 1921): 48.

13. Ohio, House Bill 214, 80th Legislative Session, 1913; Ohio General Code (Page 1920), see. 1841; Ohio Laws, 103 v. 175; Henry H. Goddard, "Responsibility of Children in the Juvenile Court," Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminobgy 3 (1912): 365-375. For another example that the intentions of those behind the Bureau of Juvenile Research were to "sort out" the morons for permanent incarceration at the Institution for Feeble-Minded Youth while the normals would go on to the "reform schools," see Ohio Board of Administration, Annual Report, 1914, 28-30. On July 1, 1914, the first day that the Bureau opened its doors, the Board sent a message to all

county juvenile courts informing them that "all minors who in the judgement of the

juvenile court, require state institutional care and guardianship, are to be committed to the care and custody of the [board] at its [bureauj." Ohio Board of Administration, Proceedings, 7 November 1913; 14 June 1914. Also see Untitied, Cleveland Plain Dealer, 6

July 1913, M37, Goddard Papers, Archives of the History of Psychology, Akron; Arthur F. Shephard, "The New Treatment of State Wards," The Ohio Bulletin of Charities and Correction 20 no. 1 (January 1914): 37-42; "Research Bureau Marks New Era Says Dr. Goddard," date unknown (1919?), newspaper unknown, M31.1, Goddard Papers.

14. Board of Administration, Annual Report, 1914,340-359; Ohio Board of State Char? ities, Correspondence, OHS-2504, Ohio Historical Society; and Ohio Board of State Charities, Scrapbook, OHS-1004, Ohio Historical Society.

15. Rupert U. Hastings to Henry H. Goddard, 15 September 1919, M31, Goddard Pa?

pers; Board of Administration, Annual Report, 1913, 95-97; and Cleveland Press, "Boys Ruled Best By Reason," 4 January 1913, Newspaper Clippings, Cleveland Press Collec? tion.

16. Rupert U. Hastings to Alida C. Bowler, 7 February 1917, Boys Industrial School, Superintendent's Correspondence, OHS-1095, Ohio Historical Society; Ohio. Opinion ofthe Attorney General, #2047, 16 November 1916, 1796-1797; Idem, #1378, 6 January 1915, 1759; The Laws of Ohio, OL 103 v. 873. Ohio General Code (Page 1913), see. 1644-45,1652-3; Idem, (1920), see. 1352-3.

17. The Board of Administration had claimed that, "any minor [could be received] for observation [at the bureau] from any public institution ... or any private charitable institution" and it had instructed county juvenile court judges to do so. Ohio General Code (Page 1916), see. 1841-1-1841-7; The Laws ofOhio, OL 103, House Bill, 214,1913.




18. Ohio. Opinion of the Attorney General, #2047, 16 November 1916, 1799; OL 99 v. 192 and v. 193, as amended 27 May 1915; Ohio General Code (Page 1920), see. 1644- 1645. "Research Bureau Marks New Era Says Dr. Goddard," date unknown (1919?), M31.1 Goddard Papers; Charles B. Davenport, "Heredity, Culpability, Praiseworthiness, Punishment, and Reward," Popular Science Monthly 83 (July 1913): 33-39.

19. The staff of the Bureau was cut in half. Thomas H. Haines (Clinical Director) left January 1 toMay 1,1917. Board of Administration, Proceedings, 05/04/1917,01/02/1917, 06/15/1917, 02/25/18-02/27/18, 11/15/1918, 06/24/1918 and 01/12/1919, 01/18/1919, 01/27/1919, 03/10/1919, 07/22/1919, 10/20/1919, OHS-467; E. R. Johnstone to Henry H. Goddard, 26 May 1921, M31, Goddard Papers; BJR folder, and "Budget ofthe Bureau, 1919-1920," M33, Goddard Papers.

20. Molly Ladd-Taylor, Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890-1930 (Urbana and Chicago, 1994): 3.

21. Ohio, Senate Biil 18, OL 103, 1913. See Ohio General Code (Page 1913), see. 1352-3, and 1352-5; and (1918), see. 1352-8. Also see the amendment in 1921. H. H. Shirer, "The Children's Code of Ohio," The Ohio Bulletin of Charities and Correction 20 no. 1 (January 1914): 16-23; Hasting H. Hart, "The Ohio Children's Code," The Survey 30 (19 July 1913): 517-518; Mary Irene Atkinson, "Division of Inspection," The Ohio Bulletin of Charities and Correction 28 (December 1921): 12-13; Harry H. Howett, "Division of Child-Care," The Ohio Bulletin of Charities and Correction 28 (December 1921): 36 and 39; Harry H. Howett, "Physical Difficulties of the Visitor," The Ohio Bulletin of Charities and Correction (November 1912): 27; C.V. Williams, "The Children's Bureau," The Ohio Bulletin of Charities and Correction 22 (1916): 115-121; Coshocton Tribune, 8 November 1915, Ohio Board of State Charities, Scrapbook, OHS-1004; Ohio Board of State Charities, Minutes ofthe Meetings, 02/11/1913, OHS 2495-GRVF-2-1.

22. Howett, "Division of Child-Care": 56-57; "The Children's Welfare Department of Ohio Board of State Charities Plays Stork to Many Ohio Families," periodical titie unknown, date unknown, Board of State Charities, Correspondence, OHS, 2504, f. 1-2; "Many Children Are Given Out as Christmas Gifts," Columbus Dispatch, 25 December 1915, Board of State Charities, Scrapbook, OHS-1004.

23. Hart, "The Ohio Children's Code": 518; The Laws ofOhio, OL 103, HB 214,1913; Ohio General Code (Page 1920), see. 1841-6.

24. Cuyahoga County contained about 1 of the 5 million Ohioans in the 1920 census. The juvenile court in Cuyahoga deait with 3778 cases in 1920 and 3151 in 1921. These figures allow one to approximate that 34,645 youths were being handled in the two year period of 1918-1920. A second method of extrapolation based on national averages of about 350 per 100,000 population in 1919 and the total population of Ohio in 1920 approximates the numbers before the courts at 37,000. Ohio Department of Public Wel? fare, Bureau of Juvenile Research, Samples Cases, OHS-2510, B 21 8E, "Marie," 5, Ohio Historical Society. Cuyahoga County, Juvenile Court, Annual Report, Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court, 1929,19.

2 5. George S. Addams," Mother's Pensions," The Ohio Bulletin of Charities and Correction 21 no. 1 (January 1915): 19; LewisESt. John, "The Inter-relation ofthe Children's Homes and the Juvenile Courts," The Ohio BuUetin of Charities and Correction 21 no. 1 (January 1915): 119. Western Reserve University, The Social Adjustment ofthe Feeble-Minded: A Group Thesis Study of898 Feeble-Mindea Individuals Known to Cleveland's Social Agencies (Cleveland, 1930): 36.

26. "Research Bureau Marks New Era Says Dr. Goddard," M31.1, Goddard Papers; Ohio Board of Administration, Publications, no. 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11. Henry H. Goddard to Superintendents of County Children's Homes, (1919-1921?), M33, Goddard Papers;




Henry H. Goddard, "The State's Program for Juvenile Research," The Ohio Bulletin of Charities and Correction 25 no. 2 (July 1919): 36.

27. A. E. Harford, " The Aims and Methods of the Church Home in Child Saving,"

The Ohio Bulletin of Charities and Correction 21 no. 1 (January 1915): 110-114. See the essays between pages 91 and 115.

28. (First name unknown) Saunders, "Children's Home Matrons," The Ohio Bulletin of Charities and Correction 23 no. 1 (1917): 116-117; Saunders, "Discipline and Recreation of Children, Or Reward Better Than Punishment," The Ohio Bulletin of Charities and Correction 20 no. 2 (1914): 77-80.

29. In short, the physicians, under Gertrude Transeau, led a revolt against the psychologists and Florence Mateer. The results were eleven resignations on April 4, 1921 and a subsequent House probe into the operations of the Bureau. See M33 and M31.1, God? dard Papers; Ohio State Journal, Columbus, April 29,1921. Goddard's salary was cut from $7,500 to $4,000, staff salaries from $59,000 to $25,000, and capital outlays from $16,400 to $9,800. Ohio, Institute for Public Efficiency, "Bulletin No. 16," M31, Goddard Papers. At Ohio State University, Goddard started a laboratory and clinic to continue his work. Board of Administration, Proceedings, 27 January 1920, OHS-467.

30. See Ohio, Department of Public Welfare, Annual Reports, 1924, 25-26. See also Ohio, Department of Public Welfare, Publications no. 26 (1926). Ohio Department of Public Welfare, Bureau of Juvenile Research, Sample Cases, OHS-2510, B 21 8E, "Marie," 7, Ohio Historical Society.



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