Eugenics at Puget Sound

Professor James Slater grades comparative anatomy exams, 1951 (Slater’s last year as a full time faculty member).

Puget Sound’s eugenics course was taught by Professor James R. Slater, who came to the College of Puget Sound after serving in the U.S. Airforce during World War I. Over more than six decades he helped build the collections of the ‘Puget Sound Museum’, the university’s natural history museum. Today, the museum is one of the most significant natural history collections in the Pacific Northwest. Slater was a popular teacher and in 1979 alumni requested the museum be renamed ‘in honor of his unique service to the institution.’

As Puget Sound’s sole biology professor for many years, Slater taught several courses, including Comparative Anatomy of Vertebrates, Genetics, Entomology, Museum Technique in Biology, Histology & Microscopic Technique, Anthropology, and The Teaching of Biology. No syllabus exists for Slater’s eugenics course. Here we have gathered archival material, contemporary biology textbooks, and a thesis supervised by Slater, to piece together how Slater may have taught about eugenics here at Puget Sound.

Slater's Course

Teaching courses on eugenics was considered an important part of a cutting-edge Biology curriculum at most undergraduate colleges. Here at Puget Sound, Professor James Slater taught a course on eugenics starting in 1920. As a herpetologist (a zoologist who studies reptiles and amphibians), Slater’s research focused on non-human animals. But as the sole biologist on campus for several years, he presumably viewed a course on eugenics as a crucial component of the biology offerings. The course title and description changed over the years. Above is the 1921-1922 version.

By the late 1930s, the title and description had been shortened. “Course 148. Eugenics” was required for all majors and minors in biology, and also required or advised for students majoring in home economics, physical education and sociology. Slater also taught Course 113. Genetics. Slater retired in 1951. The Eugenics course was removed from the list of options in 1953.

An Exam from 1939

This list of exam questions was found in a notebook in the “James R Slater Papers” housed by Puget Sound’s Archives and Special Collections. Potential answers to the questions can be found in the excerpts below from contemporary textbooks, articles in Puget Sound's campus newspaper The Trail, and a thesis supervised by Slater in 1947.

1939 Eugenics Exam Question #1. “What are some of the characteristics of the different classes of feeblemindedness?”

This section on defining Feeblemindedness is from the textbook Genetics and Eugenics.

1939 Eugenics Course Exam Question #2. What reasons
can you give for the high percent of crimes in the US?

To imagine what Slater might have expected as answers to Questions #2, we have selected relevant excerpts from University of California, Berkeley professor of zoology S.J. Holmes’ Human Genetics and its Social Import (1936). Slater’s Question #2 appears almost word-for-word in Holmes’ list of questions at the end of the chapter in which this table appears. According to Holmes, 52% of prisoners in Penitentiaries and 60% of prisoners in County jails were “mentally abnormal.” We also have Slater's exchange (left), recorded in the Puget Sound Trail for December 5, 1924, with the university chaplain after a visit to McNeil Island Penitentiary.

1939 Eugenics Course Exam Question #3-4.
What is meant by the selective action of mortality?

1939 Eugenics Course Exam Question #5. What changes would you suggest be made in the State of Washington for eugenical reasons?

Professor Slater’s Notebook & Herbert Eugene Walter’s Genetics: An Introduction to the Study of Heredity (1931, third edition)

This page from Slater’s notebooks mentions “The Kalikak Family,” a famous example often used by eugenicists to illustrate what happened when a ‘fit’ individual mated with an ‘unfit’ individual. The numbers are from a table in Brown University biology professor Herbert E. Walter’s textbook Genetics (below). The pages that immediately follow the table are also below (notice: “Immigration” and the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Slater’s notebook). This section of Walter’s textbook was also reprinted in Professor of Zoology at the University of Chicago Horatio Hackett Newman’s multi-edition textbook Evolution, Genetics and Eugenics.

James Legg's 1947 independent study thesis on "Eugenic Sterilization," supervised by Slater

"In the present day," Legg began his thesis, "when mankind as a whole is striving for human betterment, it is very disconcerting that eugenic sterilization, one of the most necessary means of bringing about this goal, is neglected, forgotten, unknown, discriminated against, or misconstrued by the vast majority of the human race." Legg cited this page from Paul Popenoe’s book Applied Eugenics (originally published in 1918 with many subsequent editions) in his discussion of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes’ argument to uphold coerced sterilization laws in the 1927 case of Buck v. Bell. Popenoe’s work had a tremendous impact on sterilization laws in California and other states. Legg cited Popenoe's work extensively. In his conclusion, he lamented the state of Washington's "present administration" for proving very uncooperative in providing information on past sterilization laws, and a local radio station for refusing to allow a "student" to speak on the subject (indicating opposition to sterilization from various directions).

1939 Eugenics Course Exam Question #6. What change would you suggest be made in the College of Puget Sound for eugenical reasons?

January 17, 1930 The Puget Sound Trail

This article in The Trail – which describes the answers posed by Eugenics students at the University of Southern California – hints at potential answers to Slater’s question: improve the means by which youths can both become acquainted with the ‘right persons’ (via events like ‘Happy Hours’ (presumably with tea rather than cocktails!) and attain and maintain normal standards of living. The latter is an interesting nod to the role of the environment in providing a foundation for the right marriages to succeed.

1939 Eugenics Course Exam Question #8:
What diseases are inherited?

A Textbook of Pathology edited by E.T. Bell, M.D. (Lea & Febiger, 1938).

These pages were cited by Slater’s student, James Legg, to illustrate which diseases are inherited.

1939 Eugenics Course Exam Question #9: Write on ‘Christianity (Christian religion) and Eugenics'

The American Eugenics Society worked hard to ensure Christians that eugenics was not in conflict with faith, including that of denominational colleges like (Methodist) Puget Sound. Charles Davenport, for example, here contributed a chapter on Eugenics to Reverend Shailer Mathews’ influential book The Contributions of Science to Religion (1924).

This is an announcement in the Puget Sound Trail that the American Eugenics Society is sponsoring a competition for the best sermon on “Religion and Eugenics: Does the Church have any responsibility for improving the human stock?” (March 14, 1930)

In an independent study thesis titled 'Eugenic Sterilization' (1947) Professor Slater’s student James Legg wrote of the relationship between eugenics and Christianity as follows: “It is hardly conceivable that the God of love and mercy whom Christians worship would desire misfits, physical or mental, to perpetuate their misfortunes on to their posterity.”

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