Word: osborns
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Among the leaders of the new, environmental eugenics is Frederick Osborn of Manhattan, 51-year-old nephew of the late Henry Fairfield. A onetime banker and railroad executive (president of Detroit, Toledo and Ironton R. R.), Frederick Osborn by 1928 decided to devote his energies to something he liked. Having discussed many times the problems of heredity with his uncle, he took it up seriously, is now a director of the American Eugenics Society. Last week, in his Preface to Eugenics (Harper; $2.75), Mr. Osborn presented the scientific evidence to demolish the last remnants of his uncle's fancy...
...heredity among individuals of a group than among any social or racial groups. Children tend to be like their parents in hereditary capacity; if their endowments are weak, not even a college education can make them bright. "In the limited environments of isolated and marginal people," said Mr. Osborn, "good hereditary capacities do not have a chance to develop as they would in a better environment. An environment equalized at a higher level would show up a superior heredity in great numbers of persons now at a low level of development...
Genetic Inheritance. In the U. S. an estimated three to five million people suffer from serious incapacities (feeblemindedness, mental disease, blindness, deafness, etc.) for which their heredity is in part responsible. Persons carrying these traits may come from the most privileged or most underprivileged groups in society. Mr. Osborn points out that, contrary to popular belief, the rate of reproduction among the mentally afflicted is quite low. However, he believes that doctors should sterilize the feebleminded. He claims that absolute prevention of births in this group would lead to a reduction of at least 10% in a generation. Twenty-nine...
...interest in public education, housing, recreation facilities, health & welfare organizations - all of which lessen the economic burden of having children. But these programs are all uncoordinated. Because "in an industrial society large families lead inevitably to lower levels of living for all but a few favored parents," Frederick Osborn believes the only sound population policy stresses "freedom of parenthood" - freedom not to have chil dren unless they are wanted, and freedom (with the aid of services rendered to mothers and children by the State) for responsible parents to have children with out their being an economic burden...
Last week, Frederick Osborn started a new job: $1-a-year population consultant for the Division of Statistical Standards. In Washington, his work will consist of determining the effect of such govern mental innovations as Rural Resettlement, TVA. First problem: Do improved en vironments stimulate birth rates...