Trait Files documents

02 family of ad kings park 5 thumb
02 single trait sheet 2 2 thumb
02 the 'blond' eskimo 9 thumb
12 g.g thumb
01 news clipping thumb
02 family history of cv kings park 5 thumb
11 german family history 6 thumb
05 info desired from missionaries 2 3 thumb
06 miss lin siang yin thumb
07 a.w 5 thumb
02 inheritance indian characteristics thumb
06 amaurotic family idiocy 1 thumb
11 monson state hospital thumb
02 german paper summary 6 thumb
23 mixed origin of some successful americans 3 thumb
01 ap kings park 3 thumb
05 the mulatto in the united states [population chart] 1 thumb
01 individual analysis card 1 2 thumb
01 leon nicolaeff 4.9 1 thumb
02 case of g.b 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.