The results of the Army tests indicate that about 75 percent of the population has not sufficient innate capacity for intellectual development to enable it to complete the usual high school course. The very extensive testing of school-children carried on by Professor Terman and his colleagues leads to closely concordant results.
In an inaugural address as president of Colgate University, G. G. Cutten proclaimed in 1922 (quoted in Cravens, 1978, p. 224): “We cannot conceive of any worse form of chaos than a real democracy in a population of average intelligence of a little over 13 years.”
Again, a catchy, numerical “fact” had risen to prominence as the discovery of objective science—while the fallacies and finagling that thoroughly invalidated it remained hidden in the details of an eight-hundred-page monograph that the propagandists never read.
THE ARMY TESTS AND AGITATION TO RESTRICT IMMIGRATION:
BRIGHAM’S MONOGRAPH ON AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE
The grand average of thirteen had political impact, but its potential for social havoc was small compared with Yerkes’s figures for racial and national differences; for hereditarians could now claim that the fact and extent of group differences in innate intelligence had finally, once and for all, been established. Yerkes’s disciple C. C. Brigham, then an assistant professor of psychology at Princeton University, proclaimed (1923, p. xx):
We have here an investigation which, of course, surpasses in reliability all preceding investigations, assembled and correlated, a hundred fold. These army data constitute the first really significant contribution to the study of race differences in mental traits. They give us a scientific basis for our conclusions.
In 1923 Brigham published a book, short enough and stated with sufficient baldness (some would say clarity) to be read and used by all propagandists. A Study of American Intelligence (Brigham, 1923) became a primary vehicle for translating the army results on group differences into social action (see Kamin, 1974 and Chase, 1977). Yerkes himself wrote the foreword and praised Brigham for his objectivity:
The author presents not theories or opinion but facts. It behooves us to consider their reliability and their meaning, for no one of us as a citizen can afford to ignore the menace of race deterioration or the evident relations of immigration to national progress and welfare (in Brigham, 1923, p. vii).
Since Brigham derived his “facts” on group differences entirely from the army results, he had first to dismiss the claim that Yerkes’s tests might not be pure measures of innate intelligence. He admitted that Alpha might mingle the impact of education with native ability, for it did require literacy. But Beta could only record unadulterated innate intelligence: “Examination Beta involves no English, and the tests cannot be considered as educational measures in any sense” (p. 100). In any case, he added for good measure, it scarcely matters whether the tests also record what Yerkes had called “the better adaptation of the more thoroughly Americanized group to the situation of the examination” (p. 93), since (p. 96):
If the tests used included some mysterious type of situation that was “typically American,” we are indeed fortunate, for this is America, and the purpose of our inquiry is that of obtaining a measure of the character of our immigration.* Inability to respond to a “typically American” situation is obviously an undesirable trait.
Once he had proved that the tests measure innate intelligence, Brigham devoted most of his book to dispelling common impressions that might threaten this basic assumption. The army tests had, for example, assessed Jews (primarily recent immigrants) as quite low in intelligence. Does this discovery not conflict with the notable accomplishments of so many Jewish scholars, statesmen, and performing artists? Brigham conjectured that Jews might be more variable than other groups; a low mean would not preclude a few geniuses in the upper range. In any case, Brigham added, we probably focus unduly on the Jewish heritage of some great men because it surprises us: “The able Jew is popularly recognized not only because of his ability, but because he is able and a Jew” (p. 190).
But what about the higher scores of Northern vs. Southern blacks? Since Yerkes had also shown that Northern blacks, on average, attended school for several more years than their Southern counterparts, didn’t the scores reflect differences in educati “Our figures, then, would rather tend to disprove the popular belief that the Jew is highly intelligent” (p. 190). more than inborn ability? Brigham did not deny a small effect for education (p. 191), but he presented two reasons for attributing the higher scores of Northern blacks primarily to better biology: first, “the greater admixture of white blood” among Northern blacks; second, “the operation of economic and social forces, such as higher wages, better living conditions, identical school privileges, and a less complete social ostracism, tending to draw the more intelligent negro to the north” (p. 192).
But what about the higher scores of Northern vs. Southern blacks? Since Yerkes had also shown that Northern blacks, on average, attended school for several more years than their Southern counterparts, didn’t the scores reflect differences in education
Brigham faced the greatest challenge to hereditarianism on the issue of immigration. Even Yerkes had expressed agnosticism—the only time he considered a significant alternative to inborn biology—on the causes of steadily increasing scores for immigrants who had lived longer in America (see p. 251). The effects were certainly large, the regularity striking. Without exception (see chart on p. 251), each five years of residency brought an increase in test scores, and the total difference between recent arrivals and the longest residents was a full two and a half years in mental age.
Brigham directed himself around the appalling possibility of environmentalism by arguing in a circle. He began by assuming what he intended to demonstrate. He denied the possibility of environmental influence a priori, by accepting as proven the highly controversial claim that Beta must measure unadulterated innate intelligence, whatever Alpha may be doing with its requirement of literacy. The biological basis of declining scores for recent immigrants can then be proven by demonstrating that decrease on the combined scale is not an artifact of differences in Alpha only:
The hypothesis of growth of intelligence with increasing length of residence may be identified with the hypothesis of an error in the method of measuring intelligence, for we must assume that we are measuring native or inborn intelligence, and any increase in our test score due to any other factor may be regarded as an error.… If all members of our five years of residence groups had been given Alpha, Beta, and individual examinations in equal proportions, then all would have been treated alike, and the relationship shown would stand without any possibility of error (p. 100).
If the differences between residence groups are not innate, Brigham argued, then they reflect a technical flaw in constructing the combined scale from varying proportions of Alphas and Betas; they cannot arise from a defect in the tests themselves, and therefore cannot, by definition, be environmental indicators of increasing familiarity with American customs and language.
Brigham studied the performances of Alphas and Betas, found that differences between residence groups persisted among the Betas, and proclaimed his counter-intuitive hypothesis of decreasing innate intelligence among more recent immigrants. “We actually find,” he proclaimed (p. 102), “that the gain from each type of examination [both Alpha and Beta] is about the same. This indicates, then, that the five years of residence groups are groups with real differences in native intelligence, and not groups laboring under more or less of a linguistic and educational handicap.”
Instead of considering that our curve indicates a growth of intelligence with increasing length of residence, we are forced to take the reverse of the picture and accept the hypothesis that the curve indicates a gradual deterioration in the class of immigrants examined in the army, who came to this country in each succeeding 5 year period since 1902 (pp. 110–111).… The average intelligence of succeeding waves of immigration has become progressively lower (p. 1
55).
But why should recent immigrants be more stupid? To resolve this conundrum, Brigham invoked the leading theorist of racism in his day, the American Madison Grant (author of The Passing of the Great Race), and that aging relic from the heyday of French craniometry, Count Georges Vacher de Lapouge. Brigham argued that the European peoples are mixtures, to varying degrees, of three original races: 1) Nordics, “a race of soldiers, sailors, adventurers, and explorers, but above all, of rulers, organizers, and aristocrats … feudalism, class distinctions, and race pride among Europeans are traceable for the most part to the North.” They are “domineering, individualistic, self-reliant … and as a result they are usually Protestants” (Grant, quoted in Brigham, p. 182); 2) Alpines, who are “submissive to authority both political and religious, being usually Roman Catholics” (Grant, in Brigham, p. 183), and whom Vacher de Lapouge described as “the perfect slave, the ideal serf, the model subject” (p. 183); 3) Mediterraneans, of whom Grant approved, given their accomplishments in ancient Greece and Rome, but whom Brigham despised because their average scores were even slightly lower than the Alpines.
Brigham then tried to assess the amount of Nordic, Alpine, and Mediterranean blood in various European peoples, and to calculate the army scores on this scientific and racial basis, rather than from the political expedient of national origin. He devised the following figures for average intelligence: Nordic, 13.28; Alpine, 11.67; Mediterranean, 11.43.
The progressive decline of intelligence for each five-year residency group then achieved its easy, innatist explanation. The character of immigration had changed markedly during the past twenty years. Before then, arrivals had been predominantly Nordic; since then, we have been inundated by a progressively increasing number of Alpines and Mediterraneans, as the focus of immigration shifted from Germany, Scandinavia, and the British Isles to the great unwashed of southern and eastern Europe—Italians, Greeks, Turks, Hungarians, Poles, Russians, and other Slavs (including Jews, whom Brigham defined racially as “Alpine Slavs”). Of the inferiority of these recent immigrants, there can be no doubt (p. 202):
The Fourth of July orator can convincingly raise the popular belief in the intellectual level of Poland by shouting the name of Kosciusko from a high platform, but he cannot alter the distribution of the intelligence of the Polish immigrant.
But Brigham realized that two difficulties still stood before his innatist claim. He had proved that the army tests measured inborn intelligence, but he still feared that ignorant opponents might try to attribute high Nordic scores to the presence of so many native speakers of English in the group.
He therefore divided the Nordic group into native speakers from Canada and the British isles, who averaged 13.84, and “non-English speakers,” primarily from Germany, Holland, and Scandinavia, who averaged 12.97. Again, Brigham had virtually proved the environmentalist claim that army tests measured familiarity with American language and customs; but again, he devised an innatist fudge. The disparity between English and non-English Nordics was half as large as the difference between Nordics and Mediterraneans. Since differences among Nordics could only represent the environmental effects of language and culture (as Brigham admitted), why not attribute variation between European races to the same cause? After all, the so-called non-English Nordics were, on average, more familiar with American ways and should have scored higher than Alpines and Mediterraneans on this basis alone. Brigham called these men “non-English” and used them as a test of his language hypothesis. But, in fact, he only knew their country of origin, not their degree of familiarity with English. On average, these so-called non-English Nordics had been in America far longer than the Alpines or Mediterraneans. Many spoke English well and had spent enough years in America to master the arcana of bowling, commercial products, and film stars. If they, with their intermediary knowledge of American culture, scored almost a year below the English Nordics, why not attribute the nearly two-year disadvantage of Alpines and Mediterraneans to their greater average unfamiliarity with American ways? It is surely more parsimonious to use the same explanation for a continuum of effects. Instead, Brigham admitted environmental causes for the disparity within Nordics, but then advanced innatism to explain the lower scores of his despised southern and eastern Europeans (pp. 171–172):
There are, of course, cogent historical and sociological reasons accounting for the inferiority of the non-English speaking Nordic group. On the other hand, if one wishes to deny, in the teeth of the facts, the superiority of the Nordic race on the ground that the language factor mysteriously aids this group when tested, he may cut out of the Nordic distribution the English speaking Nordics, and still find a marked superiority of the non-English speaking Nordics over the Alpine and Mediterranean groups, a fact which clearly indicates that the underlying cause of the nativity differences we have shown is race, and not language.
Having met this challenge, Brigham encountered another that he couldn’t quite encompass. He had attributed the declining scores of successive five-year groups to the decreasing percentage of Nordics in their midst. Yet he had to admit a troubling anachronism. The Nordic wave had diminished long before, and immigration for the two or three most recent five-year groups had included a roughly constant proportion of Alpines and Mediterraneans. Yet scores continued to drop while racial composition remained constant. Didn’t this, at least, implicate language and culture? After all, Brigham had avoided biology in explaining the substantial differences between Nordic groups; why not treat similar differences among Alpines and Mediterraneans in the same way? Again, prejudice annihilated common sense and Brigham invented an implausible explanation for which, he admitted, he had no direct evidence. Since scores of Alpines and Mediterraneans had been declining, the nations harboring these miscreants must be sending a progressively poorer biological stock as the years wear on (p. 178):
The decline in intelligence is due to two factors, the change in the races migrating to this country, and to the additional factor of the sending of lower and lower representatives of each race.
The prospects for America, Brigham groused, were dismal. The European menace was bad enough, but America faced a special and more serious problem (p. xxi):
Running parallel with the movements of these European peoples, we have the most sinister development in the history of this continent, the importation of the negro.
Brigham concluded his tract with a political plea, advocating the hereditarian line on two hot political subjects of his time: the restriction of immigration and eugenical regulation of reproduction (pp. 209–210):
The decline of American intelligence will be more rapid than the decline of the intelligence of European national groups, owing to the presence here of the negro. These are the plain, if somewhat ugly, facts that our study shows. The deterioration of American intelligence is not inevitable, however, if public action can be aroused to prevent it. There is no reason why legal steps should not be taken which would insure a continuously progressive upward evolution.
The steps that should be taken to preserve or increase our present intellectual capacity must of course be dictated by science and not by political expediency. Immigration should not only be restrictive but highly selective. And the revision of the immigration and naturalization laws will only afford a slight relief from our present difficulty. The really important steps are those looking toward the prevention of the continued propagation of defective strains in the present population.
As Yerkes had said of Brigham: “The author presents not theories or opinions but facts.”
THE TRIUMPH OF RESTRICTION ON IMMIGRATION
The army tests engendered a variety of social uses. Their most enduring effect surely lay in the field of mental testing itself. They were the first written IQ tests to gain respect, and they provided essential technology for implementing the hereditarian ideology that advocated, contrary to Binet’s wishes, the testing and ranking of all children.
Other propagandists used the army
results to defend racial segregation and limited access of blacks to higher education. Cornelia James Cannon, writing in the Atlantic Monthly in 1922, noted that 89 percent of blacks had tested as morons and argued (quoted in Chase, 1977, p. 263):
Emphasis must necessarily be laid on the development of the primary schools, on the training in activities, habits, occupations which do not demand the more evolved faculties. In the South particularly … the education of the whites and colored in separate schools may have justification other than that created by race prejudice.… A public school system, preparing for life young people of a race, 50 percent of whom never reach a mental age of 10, is a system yet to be perfected.
But the army data had their most immediate and profound impact upon the great immigration debate, then a major political issue in America. Restriction was in the air, and would have occurred without scientific backing. (Consider the wide spectrum of support that limitationists could muster—from traditional craft unions fearing multitudes of low-paid laborers, to jingoists and America firsters who regarded most immigrants as bomb-throwing anarchists and who helped make martyrs of Sacco and Vanzetti.) But the timing, and especially the peculiar character, of the 1924 Restriction Act clearly reflected the lobbying of scientists and eugenicists, and the army data formed their most powerful battering ram (see Chase, 1977; Kamin, 1974; and Ludmerer, 1972).
Henry Fairfield Osborn, trustee of Columbia University and president of the American Museum of Natural History, wrote in 1923, in a statement that I cannot read without a shudder when I recall the gruesome statistics of mortality for World War I: