Trait Files documents

01 morals efficiency report 9 thumb
01 italian immigration and insanity 2 thumb
02 teachers form 1 thumb
06 family history of ep kings park 4 thumb
15 pedigree 03 thumb
01 family tree folder 1 thumb
04 suy family 6 thumb
03 n family single trait sheets 10 thumb
11 buster child criminal photoset 8 thumb
09 some experiences with colored soldiers 5 thumb
05 case of m.l 18 thumb
07 m.k 7 thumb
06 family tree folder 2 thumb
08 m.w thumb
01 r family file 26 thumb
05 family history of pb kings park 2 thumb
16 study of a community of chronic charity cases 1929 7 thumb
05 family history of pb kings park 5 thumb
05 abnormal trait report 2 thumb
01 feeble mindness 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.