ID# 197:
"Fitter Families for Future Firesides: A report of the Eugenics Department of the Kansas Free Fair, 1920-1924"
Date:
1924
Pages: (1|2|3|4|5|6)
Source:
American Philosophical Society, ERO, MSC77,SerVI,Box 4, FF Studies, KS Free Fair

&quote;Fitter Families for Future Firesides: A report of the Eugenics Department of the Kansas Free Fair, 1920-1924&quote;

2. should score 50 [percent] for heredity before you begin to examine a baby", and again, a year later, "A prize winner at two may be an epileptic at ten". It remained for the Kansas Free Fair to give the Better Baby a pedigree. It is now demanded that the Better Baby be supported by a Family, fit both in their inheritance and in the development of their mental, moral, and physical traits. It is highly appropriate that this movement should rise out the vigorous, progressive, rural life of the present day, which is giving to the world not only material sustenance but a very important and substantial reserve vigor of brain and body. In the 1920 Free Fair Book, announcing the newly-created Eugenics Department, appeared the following appropriate challenge: TO THE MEN OF AMERICA. You talk of your breed of cattle, And plan for the higher strain; You double the food of the pasture, And heap up the measure of grain; You draw on the wits of the nation, To better the barn and the pen; But what are you doing my brothers, To better the breed of men? You boast of your Morgans and Herefords, Of the worth of a calf or a colt, And scoff at the scrub and the mongrel, As worthy a fool or a dolt; You mention the points of your roadster, With many a "wherefore" and "when", But ah, are you conning, my brothers, The worth of the children of men? And what of your boy - Have you measured His needs for a growing year? Does your mark, as his sire, in his features, Mean less than your brand on a steer? Thoroughbred - that is your watchword For stable and pasture and pen - But what is your word for the homestead? Answer, you breeders of men! Rose Trumall, Scottsdale, Arizona Jun 1928

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