Advertising eugenics: Charles M. Goethe's campaign to improve the race

Abstract

Over the last several decades historians have shown that the eugenics movement appealed to an extraordinarily wide constituency. Far from being the brainchild of the members of any one particular political ideology, eugenics made sense to a diverse range of Americans and was promoted by professionals ranging from geneticists and physicians to politicians and economists.(1) Seduced by promises of permanent fixes to national problems, and attracted to the idea of a scientifically legitimate form of social activism, eugenics quickly grew in popularity during the first decades of the twentieth century. Charles M. Goethe, the land developer, entrepreneur, conservationist and skilled advertiser who founded the Eugenics Society of Northern California, exemplifies the broad appeal of the eugenics movement. Goethe played an active role within the American eugenics movement at its peak in the 1920s. The last president of the Eugenics Research Association,(2) he also campaigned hard against Mexican immigration to the US and he continued open support for the Nazi regime's eugenic practices into the later 1930s.(3) This article examines Goethe's eugenic vision and, drawing on his correspondence with the leading geneticist Charles Davenport, explores the relationship between academic and non-academic advocates of eugenics in America.