Trait Files documents

00 love of nature thumb
00 caucasian x hawaiian thumb
02 immigration and insanity 1 thumb
04 the feebleminded child 5 thumb
09 florence family notes 5 thumb
05 biggest scotsman thumb
09 case of m.n 1 thumb
01 morals efficiency report 2 thumb
09 table data 2 2 thumb
10 r family trait forms 3 thumb
10 w family 3 thumb
01 oversize pedigree 1 thumb
05 case of m.l 16 thumb
05 williams pedigree 1 thumb
05 w.h 4 thumb
03 family tree folder 03 3 thumb
04 sc case study 2 thumb
00 photographs no 2 thumb
02 mullen to davenport 5.10 thumb
01 the biological status and social worth of the mulatto 10 thumb

The Eugenics Record Office was first and foremost a “repository and clearing house” for eugenics data. Through the “systematic” study of human heredity, the Office amassed an incredible quantity of files, forms, and assorted clipping related to a wide range of human traits. The bulk of this material comprised the “Trait Files,” a massive and rigidly organized index of human traits that sought to sort and rank human beings according to thousands of different attributes, from profession (“Teachers,” “Missionaries”) to mental ability (“Idiocy,” “Feeblemindedness”) to race (“Negro-Chinaman,” “Mulattoes”) and personality (“Sense of Humor, “Leadership”). But this data didn’t just sit around in the ERO’s archives. It was actively used to provide “scientific” justifications for a wide range of policies, from immigration restriction to sterilization and anti-miscegenation, that were shaped by leaders of the Eugenics Record Office.