The philosopher George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Some might say this is why the Third Generation Principle came to be. Sir Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin coined the word Eugenics, in 1883. "Eu" meaning "True" and "Genics" meaning "Seed or Inherited Material", In other words, "The True Seed". Galton is best known for his work in pioneering the use of fingerprints in criminal investigations. Galton was fascinated about humans and spent his career measuring everything about them. Thus, he became the "father" of the field of Eugenics. Galton advocated what is called positive eugenics -- improving future generations by encouraging the "best" in society to have more children. Charles Davenport was director of the Station for Experimental Evolution at Cold Spring Harbor where he received a monetary gift to establish the Eugenics Record Office (ERO). Davenport defined the field of Eugenics as "The Science of Human Improvement by Better Breeding". From 1910-1940, the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, which was the center of American eugenics research, was charged with keeping the records and pedigrees that were considered scientific "facts" in their day. Eventually they collected 750,000 file cards of pedigree data. .
Eugenicists favored better public health, family planning, more thoughtful preparation for marriage, and education about human reproduction. They encouraged reproduction of the "best and the brightest" and discouraged reproduction of the "unfit" -- including criminals, alcoholics, psychotics, the retarded, paupers, and those in poor physical health and envisioned a society that perpetuated white middle and upper class power. By sterilizing the mentally ill and restricting foreign immigration, eugenicists sought to isolate the American genetic stock from the taint of allegedly bad genes. American eugenicists hoped to use physical measurements of the human body to back up their claims about the superiority of the white race, although no relationship has ever been shown between bodily measurements and intelligence or other behavioral attributes.
