Eugenics Essay, Research Paper

In the 1920?s there was a movement, called the melting pot, to solve the social problems of the time with the use of technology. Eugenics is the use of science to solve social problems. A major leader in eugenics at the turn of the century was a man named Davenport. Kallikak studied eugenics too. He used case studies of individuals to show heredity. He showed how people inherited their bad and good traits from their family. Eugenics was mostly concerned with social traits. Social traits are traits individuals have that affect society. Pedigrees were used in eugenics to examine traits in families. Eugenics was promoted in magazines, books, state fairs, and movies in the beginning of the century. It was used at the time to make the people of America better breed. To make them better breed sterilization and immigration laws were put in affect. The immigration laws were put in affect because people believed that the social and economic problems of America were from letting people immigrate who had bad traits. Such people with bad traits were Greeks, Russians, Japanese, and African Americans. The immigration laws were called the Emigration Discrimination Laws. Sterilization eugenic laws were in almost all states. The laws made people who were in mental hospitals have to be sterilized. Each state sterilized different people for various reasons. Eugenics was big in Germany. Hitler was a big advocate for the use of eugenics. Just as people in the past were concerned with peoples traits and genes people of today are becoming more and more concerned with it. On concern with it has rose from our break through in the field of genetics.