Trait Files documents

05 family tree folder 05 1 thumb
01 n.y thumb
04 italian workers measurements 13 thumb
01 family tree folder 1 2 thumb
04 congressional record 1919 2 thumb
02 individual analysis card 2 6 thumb
03 jukes pedigree 2 2 thumb
03 measurements 03 1 thumb
14 treasury of human inheritance thumb
06 miss lin siang yin thumb
17 de history 3 thumb
11 h.m 4 thumb
01 speaking of pictures 1 thumb
04 italian workers measurements 19 thumb
01 family tree folder 01 3 thumb
08 gatchet photoset 3 thumb
01 ap clinical history 4 thumb
26 walker to davenport 2 thumb
07 pedigree 01 thumb
09 family history of ra kings park 2 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.