HOWTO raise a Eugenic Baby (old ad)

This Physical Culture ad for The Correspondence School of Gospel and Scientific Eugenics (whose principal had the comedy name of "M.E. Teats," no less!) manages to capture everything abhorrent about both faith and science, and is a kind of perfect parcel of awfulness, from the mad, stary schoolmarm and pinch-faced schoolmaster on the letterhead to the great! abundance! of exclamation!! marks!!!, to the testimonials from proud parents of "Eugenic Babies."

The Correspondence School of Gospel and Scientific Eugenics (via Sociological Images)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Culture • Science

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

French Blue

This one’s for UK readers…isn’t that man at top right Michael Gove?
(For non-UK readers, Gove is the British Secretary of State for Educasshun, a loony right-wing idealogue.)
tyger11

Keep in mind there is a difference between eugenics (Howard Families in Robert Heinlein books) and _forced_ eugenics (Nazis, etc.). The idea that we can breed a superior human has nothing to do with whether it’s forced on a people by madmen.
- rhamantus
  
  Except that the eugenics movement in the US was forced upon “undesirables”: not through death camps, but through forced sterilization of thousands. The methods were different, but the purpose was the same.
  Also, keep in mind that eugenics wasn’t just about breeding a “better” human, whatever that means. The better humans were defined as rich, white Europeans: non-whites and the white poor were seen as dirty, stupid brutes whose reproduction should be severely limited. Also sterilized were: deaf people, blind people, the insane, and even “normal” orphans and homeless people.
drilluminatus

N N Ridell looks like Richard Dawkins.
That Neil Guy

Those must be Khan Noonien Singh’s parents…
Anonymous

Substitute a few words and the add looks no different than a dozen parenting methods sold today. It’s all puffery.
Anonymous

I particularly like the “endorsements” from university presidents that are plainly excerpts from polite letters telling them to buzz off: “I wish I could take hold and really be of assistance to you” but you’re obviously both flakes.
Prufrock451

Some Googling on “Mary Teats,” if that really is your name, yields a bit of fresh horror: this book, written by an apparent disciple, is dedicated to her.

Apparently, for Ms. Teats a big part of the problem is the sapping of male essence through masturbation – or in the parlance of the time, “poor sex hygiene.”
Prufrock451

And here is her theory in a nutshell, from Dennis Durst’s “Evangelical Engagements With Eugenics, 1900-1940″ at http://www.ethicsandmedicine.com/archive/18/summer02_commentary3.php

“The National Purity Evangelist for the WCTU served as a lecturer for the National Purity Association, and a lecturer of the Correspondence School of Gospel and Scientific Eugenics.5 Her 1906 marriage manual, The Way of God in Marriage, exemplified an effort to weave scientific and biblical authority together into a virtually seamless argument. For this author, whose name was Mary E. Teats, children in the womb could be permanently injured not only by alcohol, but also by sexual intercourse during gestation and even by the mother’s thought processes while carrying her child. Echoing the starkly elitist rhetoric of activists in the eugenical sterilization movement, she proclaimed:

The great and rapidly increasing army of idiots, insane, imbeciles, blind, deaf-mutes, epileptics, paralytics, the murderers, thieves, drunkards and moral perverts are very poor material with which to “subdue the world,” and usher in the glad day when “all shall know the Lord, whom to know aright is life everlasting.” There are hundreds and thousands of men and women today to whom in the interests of future generations, some rigid law should say, “Write this one childless.” Men and women whose habits of life are such as to curse their offspring, should be prohibited from marrying.

In a later section, she connected such unfortunates with Malachi’s prophetic rebuke of postexilic Israel’s offering of blind, lame, and sick animals as sacrifices. She scoffed at the notion that “the lame, halt, deaf, blind, mutes, imbeciles, idiots, drunkards and moral perverts” could be properly called “God-given children,” or considered a proper offering and gift to God.”
Prufrock451

And you know, I really shouldn’t be dropping Google search terms like “eugenics + teats” while I’m at work.
- Snig
  
  I read it in Moe’s voice from the Simpsons:
  
  “ME Teats! Has anyone seen ME Teats!?”
Rich Keller

Correspondence School of Gospel and Scientific Eugenics? The how-to manual would violate the Comstock law.
awjtawjt

This isn’t the type of eugenics I’ve been spouting off about every chance I get. The INTELLIGENT people need to breed the unintelligent off the map. We’re doomed.
inkfumes

It’s as if Francis Galton and Madame Blavatsky opened up a mail order University of Phoenix just for wannabe aryans.
- Anonymous
  
  This is the most awesome comment thus far, and I suspect will remain so.
lasttide

Holy crap, someone actually used more exclamation points in an article than Bonnie Fuller on HuffPo.
MrJM

“Strict application of these principles will not only insure that your child has a stick up his butt, but the stick up his butt will have a stick up its butt ! ! Act Now ! ! Reader, this means YOU ! !”
Mister44

Fun Fact – corn flakes were made made to stop you masturbating. It worked until they put a big cock on the box, and then it just made things worse.
- Cowicide
  
  Fun Fact – corn flakes were made made to stop you masturbating.
  
  From what I understand, Prof. N. N. Riddell died of over-masterbation. Not enough corn flakes.
dwdyer

I prefer to imagine the full context of those quotes. I’m sure though these folks were quite supportive, though.

Still hypothetically:

“I have reviewed your documentation and I find it lacking in substance. While the intentions may be admirable, the techniques therein are not really eugenic, but rather behavioral approaches to child rearing. Overall the program smacks of pseudoscientific snake oil designed more as a profit-making enterprise rather than a genuine attempt to explore and share scientific methods of health and well-being. You seem to be on a path towards infamy, and I find it a shame that such intentions are wasted on such pablum. I wish I could take hold and really be of assistance to you. However, I fear you would just take my words and assistance not as constructive advice, but rather as endorsement I would become part of your attempts to fleece good-minded parents of their hard-earned income.”
- Prufrock451
  
  I was thinking the same thing about that first quote.
  
  “If you want to begin improving the race by stabbing yourself in the ovaries – and, Professor Riddell, sir, I include you in this offer – I shall be glad to be of any service to you along these lines.”
- emmdeeaych
  
  What you said.
urbanhick

I think I just threw up a little bit in my brain.
Anonymous

What is it with these old ads and their changing of font type and size?
Anonymous

Either you gave the baby superior genes at conception or you didn’t. My advise to new parents is to euthanize at the first sign of weakness.
Cowicide

See the picture of Prof. N. N. Riddell up there on the right? That’s exactly his same expression while performing sex acts.

Just look at him.

And Mrs. M.E. Teats? That’s her expression while her secret negro friend performed fellatio on her.

True story!
malathion

Be careful with the axe, Eugene.
floraldeoderant

The fonts! OH GOD, THE FONTS!
Boba Fett Diop

Well, Prof. N.N. Riddle appears to have the eyebrows of a Mentat, so I’m guessing the other one is Bene Gesserit. This should end well.
- Prufrock451
  
  “The sleeper must awaken, Paul, before he saps his essence via nocturnal emission.”
  
  http://www.monkeybicycle.net/archive/Spitznagel/dangerous.html
  
  “It kills only animals.”
Avram / Moderator

A eugenics school run by a “Professor Riddell”? Clearly some kind of Slytherin front. I’d guess they were testing Muggle-born kids for wizard genes, and sterilizing them if they found them, to eliminate the source of “Mudbloods”.
Neon Tooth

A vacant lot in Bronzeville today, providing that this ad was made after the 1909 addresses change.
SamSam

I love the testimonials from the university presidents on the ad:

“I shall be glad to be of service to you along these lines” – President, Leland Stanford University

“I wish I could take hold and really be of assistance to you” – President, Clark University

Sounds to me like these were random quotes pulled out of letters sent back to the folks by the confused presidents.

“Although I have not understood what this school is to be about, I can recommend some literature from our library on child-rearing, and I shall be glad to be of service to you along these lines.”

“I wish I could take hold and really be of assistance to you, but unfortunately I completely disagree with your philosophies.“
- Cowicide
  
  funny!