by the beginning of the early 19th century a number of facilities were to be made by reformers to house deviants amid growing recognition of social factors influencing their consditions. however by the 1840- mid 1860s this was widely seen as a faliure when in fact many were not cured. A short marxist doctine could explain why: reform merely built on top of an institutional design which caused poverty but such an observation was overlooked by the americans. The Massachusetts Board of State Charities used the (albeit vaguely) lamarkian understanding that such traits were in fact inherited. When deviancy could not be explained by a generational pattern jurists turned to alcohol as an explanation.
by the 1920s social dawinism and eugenics were a combined science. a leading herbert spencer had initiated this by as early as the mid 1800s toured the USA insisting on the hereditary origins of mental illness poverty and delinquence. though galton coined eugenics an american reading lent more to mendel. by 1904 the leading us eugenicist davenport has been funded by Carnegie Corporation to set up a laboratory at Cold Springs Harbor on Long Island. Davenport prophsised a “new era” of cooperation between the sociologist, legislator, and biologist, who together would “purify our body politics of the feeble-minded, and the criminalistic and the wayward by using the knowledge of heredity" not soon afterwards, amid heavy immigration the usa imposed such legislation throiugh the state sterilisation laws. the first state to pass such a law was indiana in 1907 but by the late 20s 24 states had such laws. the laws were upheld by the US Supreme Court in 1920 in Buck v. Bell it would be a myth to say these laws were those of conservatives they were upheld accross the politica sphere and by progreesives suchj as feminists and marxists who had seen an emmergent immigrant working class as a growing threat to reform. towards the 20s the consensus had fallen hardly on intelligence tests fbrought to the usa by Henry H. Goddard from the theories of Alfred Binet to be applied on intellectuallyt disadvantaged boys and girls. these tests received mass use by ww1 where 1 in 4 soldiers from rthe usa could not read or write.
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