E. S. Gosney
Encyclopedia
Ezra Seymour Gosney was an American
philanthropist
and eugenicist
. In 1928 he founded the Human Betterment Foundation
(HBF) in Pasadena, California
, with the stated aim "to foster and aid constructive and educational forces for the protection and betterment of the human family in body, mind, character, and citizenship," primarily through the advocacy of compulsory sterilization
of the mentally ill
and mentally retarded
.
in 1855, and received a degree in law
from the Saint Louis University School of Law
in 1880. He settled in Flagstaff, Arizona
where he was involved in the establishment of a Wool
Grower's Association. Around 1905 he relocated to Southern California
, eager to escape the "wild west" environment still present in Arizona while raising two daughters. There he became an active participant in the Pasadena, California
business community, especially in the acquisition of citrus
and other agricultural crops. Around this time he also became active in the establishment of the first California council of the Boy Scouts of America
. He also donated $12,500 to Polytechnic School
in 1907 to found the school. By the 1920s he had built up a considerable fortune, owned one of the largest lemon
groves in the state, and served as the director of numerous bank
s, trusts companies, and corporations.
While working in Pasadena he became acquainted with the biologist and eugenicist Paul B. Popenoe, and in 1925 Gosney financed Popenoe's collection of data on the implementation of California's eugenic compulsory sterilization
laws. At the time, compulsory sterilization was seen by many as a way to reduce the incidence of mental illness
and mental retardation
in the population over time. Many states had legislation requiring the sterilization of patients at state-run psychiatric facilities, though only California executed the laws in earnest, as most other state officials were wary about the legal status of compulsory sterilization legislation.
The result of Gosney and Popenoe's research was a co-authored volume, Sterilization for Human Betterment: A Summary of Results of 6,000 Operations in California, 1909-1929, completed and published in 1929. The book sought to argue that eugenic sterilization was scientifically supported, caused no harm to patients, and was legally sound. The book, distributed widely by Gosney, was used to promote compulsory sterilization legislation in other states and countries, and along with work by Harry H. Laughlin
was one of the most influential texts on sterilization in the United States. Gosney and Popenoe's book was specifically referenced by officials in Nazi Germany
in the creation of their own sterilization legislation in 1933 as having provided them with proof that sterilization programs could be safe and effective. According to a U.S. health official at the time who had just returned from a trip to Germany, "the leaders in the German sterilization movement state repeatedly that their legislation was formulated only after careful study of the California experiment." (quoted in Kühl 1994, p. 42-43) Gosney and Popenoe believed the population of mentally ill in the United States could be reduced by half in "three or four generations." The Sacramento philanthropist/eugenicist Charles Goethe
wrote to Gosney in a letter from 1934:
A follow-up study, Twenty-eight Years of Sterilization in California was published by the pair in 1938 (the American Journal of Sociology
reviewed it with a single sentence: "An awkward attempt to popularize the practice of sterilizing defectives"). The state of California would eventually sterilize over 20,000 patients in state-run hospitals under its eugenic laws; Nazi Germany would sterilize over 400,000.
In 1926, Gosney first began to organize what would by 1928 become chartered as the Human Betterment Foundation
as a philanthropic foundation to promote research and advocacy of eugenics, especially by means of sterilization. As Gosney put it, the Foundation would work for:
The initial board of trustees were Gosney, Henry M. Robinson (a Los Angeles banker), George Dock (a Pasadena physician), David Starr Jordan
(chancellor of Stanford University
), Justin Miller
(dean of the college of law at the University of Southern California
), Otis Castle (a Los Angeles attorney), Joe G. Crick (a Pasadena horticulturist), Goethe, and Popenoe. Later members included Lewis Terman
(a Stanford psychologist best known for creating the Stanford-Binet test of IQ), William B. Munro
(a Harvard professor of political science), and University of California, Berkeley
professors Herbert M. Evans (anatomy) and Samuel J. Holmes (zoology).
The Foundation also established links with the California Institute of Technology
, with Nobel Prize
-winning Caltech physicist Robert Millikan
joining the board of the HBF in 1937. The Foundation published a number of pamphlets and financed continued studies of the California sterilization program through the 1930s, and sent thousands of letters to teachers, libraries, and physicians advocating eugenic sterilization. It also underwrote a column in the Los Angeles Times
on "social eugenics" and financed a radio program as well as hundreds of popular lectures around the country. Along with the American Eugenics Society
, it was the most active and influential eugenics advocacy group in the country.
Upon Gosney's death in 1942, his daughter liquidated the Foundation and donated its remaining assets to Caltech, which in 1943 established a Gosney research fund for biological research using the money. The archives of the Human Betterment Foundation are in Special Collections at Caltech in Pasadena.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
philanthropist
Philanthropist
A philanthropist is someone who engages in philanthropy; that is, someone who donates his or her time, money, and/or reputation to charitable causes...
and eugenicist
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
. In 1928 he founded the Human Betterment Foundation
Human Betterment Foundation
The Human Betterment Foundation was an American eugenics organization established in Pasadena, California in 1928 by E.S. Gosney with the aim "to foster and aid constructive and educational forces for the protection and betterment of the human family in body, mind, character, and citizenship"...
(HBF) in Pasadena, California
Pasadena, California
Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although famous for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena is the home to many scientific and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology , the Jet...
, with the stated aim "to foster and aid constructive and educational forces for the protection and betterment of the human family in body, mind, character, and citizenship," primarily through the advocacy of compulsory sterilization
Compulsory sterilization
Compulsory sterilization also known as forced sterilization programs are government policies which attempt to force people to undergo surgical sterilization...
of the mentally ill
Mental illness
A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern generally associated with subjective distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which is not a part of normal development or culture. Such a disorder may consist of a combination of affective, behavioural,...
and mentally retarded
Mental retardation
Mental retardation is a generalized disorder appearing before adulthood, characterized by significantly impaired cognitive functioning and deficits in two or more adaptive behaviors...
.
Biography
Gosney was born in Kenton County, KentuckyKentucky
The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...
in 1855, and received a degree in law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
from the Saint Louis University School of Law
Saint Louis University School of Law
Saint Louis University School of Law , also known as SLU LAW, is a private American law school located in St. Louis, Missouri. It is one of the professional graduate schools of Saint Louis University. Opened in 1843, it is the first law school west of the Mississippi River. The school has been ABA...
in 1880. He settled in Flagstaff, Arizona
Flagstaff, Arizona
Flagstaff is a city located in northern Arizona, in the southwestern United States. In 2010, the city's population was 65,870. The population of the Metropolitan Statistical Area was at 134,421 in 2010. It is the county seat of Coconino County...
where he was involved in the establishment of a Wool
Wool
Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, vicuña, alpaca, camel from animals in the camel family, and angora from rabbits....
Grower's Association. Around 1905 he relocated to Southern California
Southern California
Southern California is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of California. Large urban areas include Greater Los Angeles and Greater San Diego. The urban area stretches along the coast from Ventura through the Southland and Inland Empire to San Diego...
, eager to escape the "wild west" environment still present in Arizona while raising two daughters. There he became an active participant in the Pasadena, California
Pasadena, California
Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although famous for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena is the home to many scientific and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology , the Jet...
business community, especially in the acquisition of citrus
Citrus
Citrus is a common term and genus of flowering plants in the rue family, Rutaceae. Citrus is believed to have originated in the part of Southeast Asia bordered by Northeastern India, Myanmar and the Yunnan province of China...
and other agricultural crops. Around this time he also became active in the establishment of the first California council of the Boy Scouts of America
Boy Scouts of America
The Boy Scouts of America is one of the largest youth organizations in the United States, with over 4.5 million youth members in its age-related divisions...
. He also donated $12,500 to Polytechnic School
Polytechnic School
Polytechnic School, often referred to as simply Poly, is a college preparatory private school in Pasadena, California.-History:The school was founded in 1907 as the first private non-sectarian, non-profit elementary school in California. It descends from the Throop Polytechnic Institute founded by...
in 1907 to found the school. By the 1920s he had built up a considerable fortune, owned one of the largest lemon
Lemon
The lemon is both a small evergreen tree native to Asia, and the tree's ellipsoidal yellow fruit. The fruit is used for culinary and non-culinary purposes throughout the world – primarily for its juice, though the pulp and rind are also used, mainly in cooking and baking...
groves in the state, and served as the director of numerous bank
Bank
A bank is a financial institution that serves as a financial intermediary. The term "bank" may refer to one of several related types of entities:...
s, trusts companies, and corporations.
Compulsory sterilization
Compulsory sterilization also known as forced sterilization programs are government policies which attempt to force people to undergo surgical sterilization...
laws. At the time, compulsory sterilization was seen by many as a way to reduce the incidence of mental illness
Mental illness
A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern generally associated with subjective distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which is not a part of normal development or culture. Such a disorder may consist of a combination of affective, behavioural,...
and mental retardation
Mental retardation
Mental retardation is a generalized disorder appearing before adulthood, characterized by significantly impaired cognitive functioning and deficits in two or more adaptive behaviors...
in the population over time. Many states had legislation requiring the sterilization of patients at state-run psychiatric facilities, though only California executed the laws in earnest, as most other state officials were wary about the legal status of compulsory sterilization legislation.
The result of Gosney and Popenoe's research was a co-authored volume, Sterilization for Human Betterment: A Summary of Results of 6,000 Operations in California, 1909-1929, completed and published in 1929. The book sought to argue that eugenic sterilization was scientifically supported, caused no harm to patients, and was legally sound. The book, distributed widely by Gosney, was used to promote compulsory sterilization legislation in other states and countries, and along with work by Harry H. Laughlin
Harry H. Laughlin
Harry Hamilton Laughlin was a leading American eugenicist in the first half of the 20th century. He was the director of the Eugenics Record Office from its inception in 1910 to its closing in 1939, and was among the most active individuals in influencing American eugenics policy, especially...
was one of the most influential texts on sterilization in the United States. Gosney and Popenoe's book was specifically referenced by officials in Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
in the creation of their own sterilization legislation in 1933 as having provided them with proof that sterilization programs could be safe and effective. According to a U.S. health official at the time who had just returned from a trip to Germany, "the leaders in the German sterilization movement state repeatedly that their legislation was formulated only after careful study of the California experiment." (quoted in Kühl 1994, p. 42-43) Gosney and Popenoe believed the population of mentally ill in the United States could be reduced by half in "three or four generations." The Sacramento philanthropist/eugenicist Charles Goethe
Charles Goethe
Charles M. Goethe was an American eugenicist, entrepreneur, land developer, philanthropist, conservationist, founder of the Eugenics Society of Northern California, and a native and lifelong resident of Sacramento, California....
wrote to Gosney in a letter from 1934:
- You will be interested to know that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind HitlerAdolf HitlerAdolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought and particularly by the work of the Human Betterment Foundation. I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people. (quoted in Black 2003)
A follow-up study, Twenty-eight Years of Sterilization in California was published by the pair in 1938 (the American Journal of Sociology
American Journal of Sociology
The American Journal of Sociology was established in 1895 by Albion Small and is the oldest academic journal of sociology in the United States. The journal is attached to the University of Chicago's sociology department and it is published bimonthly by The University of Chicago Press. Its...
reviewed it with a single sentence: "An awkward attempt to popularize the practice of sterilizing defectives"). The state of California would eventually sterilize over 20,000 patients in state-run hospitals under its eugenic laws; Nazi Germany would sterilize over 400,000.
In 1926, Gosney first began to organize what would by 1928 become chartered as the Human Betterment Foundation
Human Betterment Foundation
The Human Betterment Foundation was an American eugenics organization established in Pasadena, California in 1928 by E.S. Gosney with the aim "to foster and aid constructive and educational forces for the protection and betterment of the human family in body, mind, character, and citizenship"...
as a philanthropic foundation to promote research and advocacy of eugenics, especially by means of sterilization. As Gosney put it, the Foundation would work for:
- the advancement and betterment of human life, character, and citizenship, particularly in the United States of America, in such manner as shall make for human progress in life. It is not the primary intention of to engage in the care of the unfortunate or in any form of relief work, but rather to foster and aid constructive and educational efforts for the protection and betterment of human family in body, mind, character, and citizenship in life. (Gosney and Popenoe 1929, p.192)
The initial board of trustees were Gosney, Henry M. Robinson (a Los Angeles banker), George Dock (a Pasadena physician), David Starr Jordan
David Starr Jordan
David Starr Jordan, Ph.D., LL.D. was a leading eugenicist, ichthyologist, educator and peace activist. He was president of Indiana University and Stanford University.-Early life and education:...
(chancellor of Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
), Justin Miller
Justin Miller (judge)
Justin Miller was a lawyer and a federal appellate judge.Miller was born in Crescent City, California in 1888. He got his B.A...
(dean of the college of law at the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
), Otis Castle (a Los Angeles attorney), Joe G. Crick (a Pasadena horticulturist), Goethe, and Popenoe. Later members included Lewis Terman
Lewis Terman
Lewis Madison Terman was an American psychologist, noted as a pioneer in educational psychology in the early 20th century at the Stanford University School of Education. He is best known as the inventor of the Stanford-Binet IQ test...
(a Stanford psychologist best known for creating the Stanford-Binet test of IQ), William B. Munro
William B. Munro
William Bennett Munro was a Canadian social scientist and eugenicist.-External links:* http://www2.marianopolis.edu/quebechistory/bios/williambennetmunro.htm...
(a Harvard professor of political science), and University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
professors Herbert M. Evans (anatomy) and Samuel J. Holmes (zoology).
The Foundation also established links with the California Institute of Technology
California Institute of Technology
The California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering...
, with Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
-winning Caltech physicist Robert Millikan
Robert Millikan
Robert A. Millikan was an American experimental physicist, and Nobel laureate in physics for his measurement of the charge on the electron and for his work on the photoelectric effect. He served as president of Caltech from 1921 to 1945...
joining the board of the HBF in 1937. The Foundation published a number of pamphlets and financed continued studies of the California sterilization program through the 1930s, and sent thousands of letters to teachers, libraries, and physicians advocating eugenic sterilization. It also underwrote a column in the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
on "social eugenics" and financed a radio program as well as hundreds of popular lectures around the country. Along with the American Eugenics Society
American Eugenics Society
The American Eugenics Society was a society established in 1922 to promote eugenics in the United States.It was the result of the Second International Conference on Eugenics . The founders included Madison Grant, Harry H. Laughlin, Irving Fisher, Henry Fairfield Osborn, and Henry Crampton...
, it was the most active and influential eugenics advocacy group in the country.
Upon Gosney's death in 1942, his daughter liquidated the Foundation and donated its remaining assets to Caltech, which in 1943 established a Gosney research fund for biological research using the money. The archives of the Human Betterment Foundation are in Special Collections at Caltech in Pasadena.
External links
- Information about Gosney and the HBF papers collection in Caltech
- Another picture of Gosney (Caltech Archives)
- HBF Collection at Caltech
- Eugenics Archive images relating to compulsory sterilization (contains picture of and letters from Gosney)
- "Human Sterilization" – 1934 pamphlet published by the Human Betterment Foundation