The American Eugenics Society offered cash rewards to pastors who gave the best speeches promoting eugenics
After the 1921 Second International Congress on Eugenics, many prominent eugenicists joined to form a U.S. national eugenics society to promote eugenics to the public. To get the country’s clergy involved, the American EugenicsSociety sponsored annual contests with cash awards, up to 500 by telling his congregation that “modern science” had proven “all men are created unequal.” With such a disparity in genetic makeup, trying to lift up the unfit with education and social programs was “like attempting to grow better alfalfa with dandelion seed.” Said Matson: “We may raise a pig in the parlor but he remains a pig.” Other ministers won cash prizes for telling their members that God was waiting for the human race to become “purified silver,” cleansed of its “impurities of dross and alloy” and that “if marriage is entered into by those notoriously unfit to give a righteous biologic entail, the state has a right to insist on sterilization.”
References
- Whitaker, Robert. (2002). Mad in America Chapter 3. UNFIT TO BREED (p. 89). New York, NY: Basic Books.