Trait Files documents

01 c.d 15 thumb
02 blond indians of the darien jungle 8 thumb
07 graphed data 3 thumb
08 field worker report 01 2 thumb
09 average number of children 18 thumb
10 misc standard forms 7 thumb
09 case of m.n 5 thumb
02 literary digest 2 thumb
01 is twinning hereditary 6 thumb
00 mestizos of kisar thumb
02 immigration and insanity 4 thumb
00 twin monsters thumb
03 family tree folder 03 1 thumb
01 s family file 9 thumb
04 family history of el kings park 4 thumb
01 reference sheet thumb
04 congressional record 1919 8 thumb
00 insanity thumb
08 d file 3 thumb
03 n family single trait sheets 8 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.