Word: eugenist
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Died. Major Leonard Darwin, 93, eugenist, last surviving son of Charles Darwin's five; in Forest Row, Sussex, England. Onetime member of Parliament (1892-95), president of the Royal Geographical Society (1908-11), the Eugenics Education Society (1911-28), he energetically plumped for eugenic reforms, which he saw as Western civilization's safeguard against "slow and gradual decay." He also devoted himself to correcting misconceptions about his famed father, a windmill-tilting job. In 1934 he commented: "As I grow older, my faith in the veracity of mankind gets steadily less & less, and now, in my 85th year...
Many a sociologist and historian used to agree with Paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn that Anglo-Saxons were God's special gift to earth. Osborn was a leading eugenist in the days when many believed that the "unfit" should be weeded out rather than cared for under public health measures which coddled weaklings, allowed them to reproduce, ultimately lead to an inferior stock. While these ideas have occasionally furnished fodder for opponents of public housing, relief, the New Deal, the only places where they are still flourishing today are Nazi Germany and Italy. Long before Henry Osborn died...