Meanwhile, Harry Hamilton Laughlin, superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office and an active public lobbyist for the movement, turned biological theory into public policy. In 1914, he prepared a two-volume report that proposed a schedule for sterilizing 15 million people over the next two generations, as well as a model sterilization law to accomplish this plan.43 The defective “10 percent of our population,” Laughlin claimed, “are an economic and moral burden on the 90 percent and a constant source of danger to the national and racial life.” It is estimated that 65,000 persons were
...more
