Henry R. Seager, “The Minimum Wage as Part of a Program for Social Reform.” 1913. [SOURCE] As the enumeration of these benefits suggests, important reform to accompany minimum wage be comprehensive provision for industrial and trade education vocational guidance. Starvation wages are due frequently to exploitation, frequently to physical, mental and moral defects in the …
Category: idiots
Sydney Webb: The parasites should not be allowed to compete as wage-earners, for it prevents natural selection from working…
Sydney Webb in Industrial Democracy (regarding the minimum wage) – 1920 The problem of the Unemployable is not created by the fixing of a National Minimum by law. The Unemployable we have always with us. With regards to certain sections of the population, this unemployment is not a mark of social disease, but of social …
The Duty of the State in the Treatment of the Deformed: R. Z. Mason, Appleton WI, 1879
R.Z. Mason, mayor of Appleton, WI, “The Duty of the State in its Treatment of the Deaf and Dumb, the Blind, the Idiotic, the Crippled and Deformed, and the Insane.” [Source / Italics added, bold text added] In the progress of modern civilization, the state has come slowly to a recognition of certain duties and …
Joseph Fletcher, A Right to Die; Down Syndrome people are not persons and OUGHT to be killed
[People] have no reason to feel guilty about putting a Down’s syndrome baby away, whether it’s “put away” in the sense of hidden in a sanitarium or in a more responsible lethal sense. It is sad; yes. Dreadful. But it carries no guilt. True guilt arises only from an offense against a person, and a Down’s is not a person.
Virginia Woolf: Defective idiots and imbeciles “should certainly be killed.” (1915)
Author Virginia Woolf, in a 1915 diary entry describing some people she saw while on a walk: we met & had to pass a long line of imbeciles. the first was a very tall young man, just queer enough to look at twice, but no more; the second shuffled, & looked aside; and then one …
Helen Keller: Physicians Juries for Defective Babies, Article in the New Republic, 1915
Due to the successful sanitization of the past in regards to eugenics, it is largely unknown how pervasive eugenics attitudes were, and how expansive eugenicists believed their program to be. Here we have Helen Keller, writing in a prominent liberal magazine, advocating explicitly for infanticide–in the name of the race. For more information and the …
Are imbeciles, the feeble-minded, criminals, humans? This Eugenicist says NO
One of the clear implications of the eugenicist mindset was that there were certain humans who were not really humans. It was not common to hear this directly put, although in many cases they come very close. It is important to realize that they did not think they were being prejudicial, but rather, scientific. After …
Mass Extermination and ‘Lethal Chambers’ Widely Considered by Eugenicists in America, England, and Germay
Long before the Nazis implemented the ‘Final Solution,’ American and English eugenicists had talked often of the use of ‘lethal chambers’ to deal with the pressing problem of the ‘unfit.’ You can imagine Hitler’s surprise, when, after acting on precisely what elites in America and England had long been advocating for, he was perceived as …
The Lethal Chamber Proposal, 1930 Letter to Editor by Dr. Richard Berry
A little known fact is that those with a eugenics mindset had been talking about ‘lethal chambers’ and ‘segregation camps’ for a long time before the Nazis actually used them. Here is one example. The Lethal Chamber Proposal To the Editor, Eugenics Review SIR,-I observe in your issue of April 1930, page 6, that you …
The Obstacle of Sentiment and Sentimentalists to Pure Scientific Application
One of the common themes that surfaces in eugenic writings is their annoyance that others do not act on the logical implications of Science. Note that, in the main, they are not taking issue with people who do not agree with their conclusions, but rather those who do agree–but will not act on them. This …
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