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“Not by a Decree of Fate:” Ellen Richards, Euthenics, and the Environment in the Progressive Era

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Abstract

In 1904, Ellen Richards introduced “euthenics.” By 1912, Lewellys Barker, director of medicine and physician-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, would tell the New York Times that the “task of eugenics” and the “task of euthenics” was the “Task for the Nation.” Alongside the emergence of hereditarian eugenics, where fate was firmly rooted in heredity, this article places euthenics into the same Progressive Era demands for the scientific management over environmental issues like life and labor, health and hygiene, sewage and sanitation. I argue that euthenics not only heralded women as leaders in the quest for what Richards and eugenicists termed “racial improvement,” but also aimed to make reforms through environmental and educational changes rather than hereditary interventions. Seeking to recuperate the figure of Ellen Richards in the history of science, I place Richards and her euthenics more into the debate over eugenics rather than over the emergence of home economics. Building on the work of Donald Opitz, Staffan Bergwik, and Brigette Van Tiggelen, this article shows, first, how Richards’ career threads the needle between the home and the laboratory as sites of science making, not as separate spheres but as overlapping realms, and helps recover how domestic concerns shaped the focus of the life sciences. Second, this article shows how euthenics shaped eugenics by looking at the writings of American eugenicists Charles Davenport, Paul Popenoe, and David Starr Jordan. Third, the article describes how euthenics took root in new academic departments of domestic science, home economics, and departments child welfare and family life in the 1920 and 1930s, most notably the department of euthenics at the Kansas State Agricultural College from 1926 and the Institute of Euthenics at Vassar College after 1923.

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Notes

  1. Ellen Henrietta Richards, “Wanted, A Test for ‘Man Power’.” Clarkson Bulletin III:3 (1906), pp. 5–11, 9. In Box 1, Ellen Swallow Richards collection (MC659). Department of Distinctive Collections, MIT Libraries, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  2. Jacob A. Riis, “Child Life: The Bad Boy.” In Proceedings of the First National Conference on Race Betterment, Battle Creek Michigan Jan 8–12, 1914. (Race Betterment Foundation, 1914), pp. 241–250, 243.

  3. Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson, Applied Eugenics (Macmillan, 1918), p. 446.

  4. There are a number of brief biographies as well, including Rosen (1974), pp. 67–69; Rayner-Canham and Rayner-Canham (1998), pp. 51–55; Richardson (2000); Oakley (2018).

  5. Proceedings of the Sixth Lake Placid Conference on Home Economics (Iroquois Branch of Lake Placid Club) (September 19–24, 1904), p. 63.

  6. Proceedings of the Sixth Lake Placid Conference on Home Economics, p. 64. Emphasis and block format in original.

  7. I have used one of two copies of Euthenics held in the reading room of Department of Distinctive Collections, MIT Libraries, Cambridge, Massachusetts from the Ellen Swallow Richards collection (MC659). Their copy, Ellen H. Richards, Euthenics: The Science of Controllable Environment (Boston: Whitcomb & Barrows, 1912), is from 1912. The original edition at the American Philosophical Society library is from 1910.

  8. Proceedings of the Sixth Lake Placid Conference on Home Economics, p. 64.

  9. As Richards explained, “we no longer hold with Richard Owen and the socialists that man is necessarily controlled and molded by his surrounding, and he is absolutely subject to the laws of animal evolution. A new era will dawn when man sees his power over his own future. Then, and not till then, will come again the willingness to sacrifice present ease and pleasure for the sake of race progress” (Richards 1905, pp. 18–19).

  10. In a great tragedy, Hunt was permitted to take Richards’ papers from MIT to write her biography and the papers subsequently disappeared. Hunt herself was recruited for the American Eugenics Society on the recommendations of Irving Fisher. However, the AES learned from the Bureau of Home Economics that “Miss Hunt died of pneumonia last January.” Handwritten note on the reverse of letter from Whitney to Hunt, Nov 15, 1927. Folder Caroline Hunt, box 15, American Eugenics Society papers MSS.575.06.Am3. American Philosophical Society.

  11. See Barker and Sprunt (1925), Chapter VI: “Euthenics”, Chapter VII: “Air as a Factor in Euthenics”, Chapter VIII: “Food as Factor in Euthenics.”

  12. “Preventing Czolgoszes and Schranks: Dr Barker of Johns Hopkins, Successor to Dr. Osler Prescribes Task for the Nation.” New York Times Oct 24, 1912, p. 10.

  13. Proceedings of the Sixth Lake Placid Conference on Home Economics, p. 66–67.

  14. “Notes”. (n.d.) From File “General, undated, Ellen Swallow Richards papers,” Sophia Smith Collection, SSC-MS-00130. Smith College Special Collections. Emphasis in original.

  15. As Pnina Abir-Am noted, under-representation and under-acknowledgement of women in science has long been the result of the “exclusion of the domestic realm from science” (Abir-Am and Outram 1987, p. 4).

  16. Compare Davenport, “Euthenics and Eugenics,” Popular Science Monthly 78 (1911), pp. 16–20, 18. To C. B. Davenport, “Lecture: Factors of Heredity and Environment in Criminality”. n.d. Box 25, Charles B. Davenport papers (B.D27). American Philosophical Society.

  17. Edith Elmer Wood, “The Scope and Methods of Modern Housing.” Talk before the “Conference on the Eugenic Aspects of Housing of the American Eugenics Society,” April 1st, 1938. Box 2, American Eugenics Society papers MSS.575.06.Am3. American Philosophical Society. Emphasis in original.

  18. Richards, Ellen H. 1909. The Art of Right Living. Boston: Whitcomb & Barrow. p. 9.

  19. La Follette’s II:52 (1910), pp. 1, 10–11. In Box 1, Ellen Swallow Richards collection (MC659). Department of Distinctive Collections, MIT Libraries, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  20. In the history of chemistry Richards’ euthenics been by-passed. Indeed, Creese and Creese do not mention euthenics at all or even list Euthenics among Richards’ publications.

  21. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Annual Catalogue (Boston: Geo.H. Ellis, 1904), p. 224.

  22. See the advertisement insert from both John Wiley & Sons of New York and Whitcomb & Barrows of Boston, in Richards (1905).

  23. Course Catalogue number #565 ‘Air, Water, and Food Analysis’. In Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Annual Catalogue (Boston: Geo.H. Ellis, 1904), p. 195.

  24. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Annual Catalogue (Boston: Geo.H. Ellis, 1904), p. 221.

  25. Atwater had worked under the German physiologist Carl von Voit to devise the calorimeter to measure the energy contained in human food, even as von Voit measure of the gaseous and solid wastes did not account for the energy consumed and thus made the important discovery that oxygen utilization differed according to the food consumed. (Rabinbach 1990, pp. 126, 337).

  26. Described briefly in Ellen H. Richards, Conservation by Sanitation: Air and Water Supply Disposal of Waste (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1911), pp. 199–201.

  27. I thank a reviewer for bring this review to my attention.

  28. “Mrs. Richards’ Relation to the Association of Collegiate Alumnae.” n.d. From File: “General, undated, Ellen Swallow Richards papers,” Sophia Smith Collection, SSC-MS-00130. Smith College Special Collections.

  29. Ellen H. Richards, “The Relation of College Women to progress in Domestic Science.” Paper presented to the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, Oct 24, 1890. In Box 1, Ellen Swallow Richards collection (MC659). Department of Distinctive Collections, MIT Libraries, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  30. Ellen Henrietta Richards, “Wanted, A Test for ‘Man Power’.” Clarkson Bulletin III:3 (1906), pp. 5–11, 9. In Box 1, Ellen Swallow Richards collection (MC659). Department of Distinctive Collections, MIT Libraries, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  31. Ellen Henrietta Richards, “Wanted, A Test for ‘Man Power’.” Clarkson Bulletin III:3 (1906): 5–11, 9. In Box 1, Ellen Swallow Richards collection (MC659). Department of Distinctive Collections, MIT Libraries, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Richards always had a response to a common view that individualistic Americans’ resisted civil authorities asserting standards of living, a view Richards skewered as early as 1888 by noting that “Americans claim the right to be the victims of their own ignorance and carelessness.” “Sanitary Science in the Home,” 1888. Folder “Sanitary Science in the Home,” In Box 1, Ellen Swallow Richards collection (MC659). Department of Distinctive Collections, MIT Libraries, Cambridge, Massachusetts, p. 5.

  32. Ward cited Weisman’s example of pianists in Lester Frank Ward, “The Transmission of Culture,” The Forum 2(3), (1891), pp. 312–319, 312.

  33. Letter from E. H. Richards to Mineah, June 6, 1897. Folder ‘Letters Richards to Mineah, 1896–1905.’ Ellen Swallow Richards papers, Vassar College Special Collections.

  34. Letter from Effie Franklin to Mrs. Richards, Nov 5, 1907. From File “Franklin, Effie Scott, 1907. Ellen Swallow Richards papers.” Sophia Smith Collection, SSC-MS-00130, Smith College Special Collections.

  35. Letter from Benedict to Davenport, May 20, 1909. Box 4, Charles B. Davenport papers (B.D27). American Philosophical Society.

  36. Davenport to Benedict, May 22, 1909. Box 4, Charles B. Davenport papers (B.D27). American Philosophical Society.

  37. “The New Dispensation or Development of Children by Environment,” Scientific American 107(10): (Sept 7, 1912), 190.

  38. “Mrs. Ellen Richards Opens Euthenics Course.” Daily Californian, No. 18 July 14, 1909, p. 1.

  39. Richards, Euthenics (1912), rear cover foldout.

  40. On the experimental “New England Kitchen” to cook the cheapest and most nutritious food materials by better methods,” see Mary Abel, The Story of the New England Kitchen, with a preface by Ellen Richards. In Box 1, Ellen Swallow Richards collection (MC659). Department of Distinctive Collections, MIT Libraries, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  41. All emphases in the original. The rise of hereditarianism was tied to the minimization of the influence of surrounding circumstances in some life and medical sciences and was closely linked to their conversion in the nineteenth century into experimental sciences, a process nearly two centuries in the making. As the philosophers of biology Rachel Ankeny and Sabina Leonelli note, the environment became treated as “an element to be standardized, controlled, then ignored” as laboratory studies with model organisms took root across the life sciences. (Leonelli, Ankeny, Nelson, and Ramsden 2014, p. 500).

  42. All emphases in the original.

  43. Charles Davenport was a major figure in American eugenics. Major studies include Rosenberg (1961); Haller (1963); Allen (1986); Kevles (1987).

  44. Italics in original. Significantly, Richards had argued in 1905 that the increased efficiency from euthenics would get people fuller lives without “more money spent”. Indeed, Richards called just giving money a fallacy – in other words, she really agreed with Davenport against the socialists. (Richards 1905, p. 20).

  45. When Popenoe said that euthenics was more immediately effective than eugenics, it was a remarkable admission, particularly because Applied Eugenics was a book Will Provine once described as “the most widely used textbook on this subject for more than 15 years.” (Provine 1973, p. 791). This was noted at the time: A. M. Carr-Saunders called Applied Eugenics “probably the most useful” book in 1926 to describe the “present position” of eugenics. (Carr-Saunders 1926, p. 253; Haller 1963, p. 72). Stern notes that Applied Eugenics was “an immensely popular text” that expanded on Popenoe and Johnson’s “hard-line hereditarianism and emphasized the importance of eliminating the unfit” (Stern 2015, pp. 180–181). Yes it did, but it also highlighted the existence of euthenics, and conceded, incredibly for a central text on hereditarian eugenics, that changing environment was often more effective at invoking change!

  46. Sherbon 1934, p. 67.

  47. Proceedings of the Seventh Lake Placid Conference on Home Economics, (1905), pp. 24.

  48. Historians of home economics have been wary of the proposal of euthenics by one of the then doyens of home economics perhaps because it relates their gingham-clad field to the emergence of jackbooted eugenics. Kristen Egan conflated Richards’ euthenics with eugenics, arguing that “Euthenics interprets race with a biological lens targeting foreign immigrants,” but Egan’s evidence rests on one of Richards’ fellow proponent of home economics, Charlotte Gilman, who certainly advocated clear hereditarian views (Egan 2011, pp. 77, 81). The evidence for Richards’ sharing them is little more than an oblique line from Euthenics: “but civilization must not spell disease and ruin.” (Egan 2011, pp. 77, 81).

  49. I am grateful to Luis Campos for this reference.

  50. Proceedings of the Sixth Lake Placid Conference on Home Economics (1907), p. 74.

  51. The Stout Institute, 1913. Euthenics. Stout Institute. (Held in the New York State Library, Call no.: 016.64 S88). As Toby Appel described, the introduction of physiology into curricula stemmed from an emphasis on personal hygiene education but shifted when biomedical physiology largely took off (Appel 1994).

  52. “Report of the Euthenics Committee” May 10, 1922. Euthenics Committee, AAUW, folder 10.IVB.17, American Association of University Women (MC271). Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute. See also Stout Institute.

  53. Helen W. Ford, The Successful Family Today: An Outline (Manhattan: Kansas State Agricultural College, 193?). Justin Morrill, History of the Kansas State College of Agriculture and Applied Science (Manhattan: KSAC, 1940). See https://archive.org/stream/HistoryOfTheKansasStateCollegeOfAgricultureAndAppliedScience/KSULWILLARD1940_Complete_djvu.txt. Kansas State’s Department of Child Welfare and Euthenics changed its name to the Department of Family and Child Development in 1955.

  54. My thanks to the staff the Kansas State University Morse Dept of Special Collections. See Royal Purple (1928), p. 35. Dura Louise Cockrell, “Our Youngest College Students,” Home Economics News V:2 (July 1928), pp. 33–34, 50–51, 34. From V.F. Child Welfare Lab, KSU (1920s-), KSU Special Collections.

  55. This was not an embrace of self-help culture as much as a foray into environmental engineering. As Michelle Murphy has explored the deep ways in which a supposedly benign office environment damaged the health of the largely feminine workforce. As Murphy details, rather than catalogue discrete factory accidents or noticeable injuries, the office workers experienced an assemblage with new materials, air conditioning and heating systems, new patterns of seated work, and unknown circulating environmental chemicals which contributed both to worker’s activism and a new disease category called sick building syndrome. (Murphy 2006)

  56. Macleod, “Euthenics: extract from a preliminary report to the President of Vassar College by the Director of Euthenics.” n.d. (before Feb 1924). Folder 10.44 (V.C. department. Euthenics Division), Vassar College Subject Files. Vassar College Special Collections.

  57. In the plant sciences beginning around 1900 and continuing for most of the century, a large effort was put into exactly what Cole wanted, controlled environment studies via field trials, and later controlled cabinets and phytotrons by the 1950s, in a major counterpart to the blossoming of genetics (Munns 2017, 2021).

  58. Joseph A. Krisses, “Eugenics and Euthenics,” New York Times (Oct 15, 1926), p. X16. Later twin studies became popular because twins shared identical genetic material and approximately (or not for separated twins) environments. Richard Lewontin argued that twin studies did not test heredity but environment (Lewontin 2001, p. 38). As Kevles shows, this issue returned with the new hereditability claims of Arthur Jensen in the 1960s (Kevles 1987, pp. 269, 280–282).

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Acknowledgements

I extend my appreciation to the many supportive and constructive reviewers of the various incarnations of this article, as well as the previous and current editors of JHB. I thank my student Joshua Gopaul for first bringing Davenport’s article on eugenics and euthenics to my attention. My thanks to the staff the Kansas State University Morse Dept of Special Collections. Also appreciation to Luis Campos, Michael Mehler, and a reviewer for unexpected sources on euthenics.

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  1. History Department, John Jay College of the City University of New York, 524 W. 59th St., New York, 10019, USA

    David PD Munns

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Munns, D.P. “Not by a Decree of Fate:” Ellen Richards, Euthenics, and the Environment in the Progressive Era. J Hist Biol 56, 525–557 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-023-09733-9

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