Exams of Franco-American WWI Draftees Show the Poorest State of Public Health in the U.S.

On February 20, 1923, Charles B. Davenport of the Eugenics Record Office in Long Island, NY, wrote a letter to Henry F. Perkins, eugenics point man at the University of Vermont. “Did you know,” wrote Davenport to Perkins, “that in the study of defects found in drafted men, Vermont stood at or near the top of the list as having precisely or nearly the highest defect rate for quite a series of defects? This result I ascribe to the French Canadian constituents of the population which, I had other reasons for believing, to contain an undue proportion of defectives.”1

Davenport knew well the “study of defects found in drafted men” because he co-wrote the detailed statistical report on the subject for the Senate Committee on Military Affairs.2  This 1919 report of more than 350 pages compiles data from medical examinations of 2.7 million men, 18 to 30 years old, drafted during the First World War. Examiners reported cases of what they regarded as mental or physical “defects,” which included a wide range of diseases and conditions from heart disease, to asthma, to blindness, to flat feet, to obesity, to drug addiction.

The report cuts the data three ways. First, it reports the distribution of these “defects” among the states. It then divides most of the states into smaller regions that reflect different economies: agricultural, manufacturing, mining, or commuter regions. There is also a similar series with the data grouped by environment or terrain: mountain, desert, maritime regions, etc. In these analyses, the researchers attempt to group the various health issues according to the draftee's occupation or milieu.

1919 report by Albert G. Love
and eugenics supporter Charles B. Davenport

Then comes what the researchers term “the racial series.” These “races” include groupings like “mountain whites,” “Indians” (Native Americans) and “Mexicans.” There is also a number of breakout groups of “foreign born whites.” “Group 19” is the French Canadian “racial” group.

This group was created, like the other groups, by aggregating areas with high concentrations of French-Canadians, where the latter constituted more than 10 percent of the population. All such regions were in New England, in the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The French-Canadian group had “the highest defect rate” of any of the “racial” groupings in the U.S. (266). Areas with high concentrations of French-Canadians led the lists in a range of health problems associated with low socioeconomic status including alcoholism, malnutrition, and obesity. 

Presenting their findings on “Group 19,” the researchers state:

The French Canadian group shows an extraordinary excess of defects in various important respects, such as tuberculosis, spinal curvature, deaf-mutism, mental deficiency and psychoses, refractive errors [myopia and other eyesight issues], otitis media [inflammatory diseases of the ear], defective hearing, asthma, bad teeth, hernia, deficient size of chest, and height and underweight. The sections of which the French Canadians form a predominant factor are among the poorest from the military standpoint (46).

The French-Canadian group led the U.S. in alcoholism. Alcoholism was high across New England in 1919 and not only in the areas with high concentrations of French-Canadians. Of the ten states with the highest numbers of alcoholics among drafted men, five of them were in New England (86, Table 12). However, in the parts of New England with large French-Canadian populations, rates of alcoholism were many times higher than elsewhere. The rate of alcoholism among young men in the French-Canadian parts of New England was 0.91 per 1000 persons. By contrast, populations such as the Germans/Austrians and Russians in the U.S., stereotypically thought to enjoy a drink, had rates of alcoholism of 0.38 and 0.21 per thousand respectively (269, Table 106).

The French-Canadian grouping also had the highest rates, by far, of men judged “underheight” and “underweight” (294, Tables 180, 181). They also had the highest incidence of diagnosed malnutrition except for “mountain whites” and “Indians” living in “sparsely settled” places (294, Table 182).  Anemia, a condition often caused by vitamin or mineral deficiency, was found to be “exceptionally high in the French Canadian section(s) (305).” At the same time, the highest rates of obesity in the U.S. were found in places with large French-Canadian populations (272, Table 114).

The “French-Canadian immigrants” were also found to suffer from a high proportion of “defective physical development.” But exactly how this condition is defined and how it differs from “underweight” is unclear even to the researchers. However, the rate of “total defective development and nutrition” among the French-Canadian group was many times higher than that of any other group listed: 85.26 persons per 1000, as compared with the next highest numbers among Scottish-Americans and “mountain whites,” with about one-half the rate of the French-Canadian group. The researchers own that “defective development” “is due to a variety of causes” (33-34). Since Davenport was a eugenics supporter, the report often wishes to find a “congenital” or “racial” cause for some alleged “defect.” But it admits that “defective physical development” has environmental components.

The group [showing ‘defective physical development’] has a great importance for social therapeutics, since it is largely due to unhygienic methods of living, although in considerable part due, also, to congenital defects…. A center for defective physical development is found in the States which center around Chattanooga, and it seems probable that this area is largely determined by the presence of hookworm infection. There is another center in New England, and this seems to be controlled very largely by the French-Canadian immigrants, who show a high rate of defective physical development (33-34).

“Unhygienic methods of living” are blamed for the undernourished conditions of young men in the mill towns, and not the socioeconomic conditions that had turned the rural poor of Québec into a neglected labor pool destined for U.S. mills and factories. Whether the causes were congenital or environmental, many of the young men who came from the mill town milieu were no longer physically fit even for the trenches.

Having found that the French-Canadian group scored highest in a wide range of alleged “defects,” the authors then attribute the poor showing of some New England states to high concentrations of French-Canadians. 

Rhode Island had the highest “defect rate” overall. “Conditions in which Rhode Island stands first or second are: Alcoholism, obesity, neurosis, total for myopia and defective vision (cause not stated), hemorrhoids, bronchitis, deformities of appendages and trunk, atrophy of muscles of the appendages, underheight, and underweight (41).” Why does Rhode Island stand at or near the top in many “defects,” per Love and Davenport?

It is largely because of the defective or nonresistant stock which has been drawn to this the most urban of all the States—that in which the population is most generally engaged in manufacturing. While one may not ascribe the defects to the occupation, it is probable that the occupation has attracted stock with defects or susceptible to them. Next to Rhode Island stands Vermont....It is surprising in what a number of defects the small State of Vermont leads. The reason for this is probably because of the presence in Vermont of a large number of French Canadians in whom the defect rate is particularly high (41).

Love and Davenport ascribe Rhode Island’s high “defect rate” to “defective stock” attracted by the state’s manufacturing, while Vermont’s is attributed to its “large number of French-Canadians.” However, elsewhere in the report, the authors find that these two states “have this in common that they contain a large proportion of Canadian French (149).” More than once, they claim that the reason for these states' poor showing is the French-Canadian presence. 

The authors discuss some problems with the hypothesis that New England’s health woes were due to “defective” French-Canadians. They observe that New Hampshire had a larger percentage of French-Canadians than either Rhode Island or Vermont, and yet it was in the middle of the pack as regards alleged “defects.” The authors conclude that the “high position of Rhode Island and Vermont” with respect to “defects” is “due to a combination of...three factors...the thoroughness of the examinations made by local boards, the intelligence and care exercised at Camp Devens [where New England draftees were examined] and the high percentage of French Canadians in the population (149).”

Conditions that were environmental, a consequence of living in fetid mill towns, are ascribed to “congenital” causes. These conclusions were then used  by eugenics proponents, like Davenport and Vermont’s Henry Perkins, to class the French Canadians as an "inferior" breed in their racial hierarchies. Since French-Canadians in the mill towns were poor, they faced public health challenges; these challenges were then essentialized by eugenics proponents and made a part of the “racial” (their word) makeup of the French Canadian people.

Among the alleged “defects” that stemmed from life in the mill towns were problems with eyesight, hearing, and respiratory issues. And these health problems appear already in young men mostly in their twenties. High rates of obesity, malnutrition, and the off-the-chart rate of alcoholism show a community that’s been marginalized by the society of its day and relegated to an underclass status. Such a status, in all times and places, is hazardous to one’s health.

My maternal grandfather (right)
and his brother in their WWI uniforms

The data from drafted men paints a shocking portrait of the Franco-Americans in the mill towns in the early 20th century. They emerge as among the most disadvantaged groups in the U.S. from a public health perspective. When compared with groups recognized as poor or historically disadvantaged, such as “mountain whites,” rural Native Americans, and Mexican-Americans, the data shows the tragically poor condition of public health in the New England mill towns where the French-Canadians predominated.

Both of my grandfathers were in the military in the World War One era and they were both born and raised in the areas Love and Davenport have aggregated to create their French-Canadian “racial” group. Their data provides insight into the world of my grandparents, the places where they were born and raised. My father was born less than a decade after the report on drafted men was issued, in one of the heavily French-Canadian areas of Maine. The “defective” French-Canadian men described here were relatives, friends and neighbors of my parents and grandparents. This report captures the stark reality of the mill town milieu that formed previous generations of Franco-Americans, the forbears of most of the two million French-Canadian descendants who still live in New England. No surprise that little of what happened there was passed down to younger generations.

For more on eugenics and Franco-Americans see Chapter 13 of my book A Distinct Alien Race.

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Notes

1. David Vermette, A Distinct Alien Race (Montreal: Baraka Books, 2018), 256.

2. U.S. Congress, Senate, Defects Found in Drafted Men: Statistical Information Compiled from the Draft Records, Prepared under the direction of the Surgeon General, M.W. Ireland, by Albert G. Love, M.D. and Charles B. Davenport, Printed for the use of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, 66th Congress, 1st Session, 1919. Parenthetical page numbers and table numbers refer to this report.

The French-Canadian 'Alien In Our Midst': Nativism vs. Nationality in 20th c. America

In previous posts I discussed from a French North American perspective the early 20th c. eugenicist activities of Charles Davenport and the “master race” theories of Madison Grant.

Grant’s best-known book is The Passing Of The Great Race, which Hitler called his “bible,” and which was an influence on U.S. legislation in the 1920s restricting immigration. In 1930, Grant and co-author Charles Stewart Davison brought forth a volume of essays on the theme of immigration entitled The Alien In Our Midst or Selling Our Birthright For a Mess of Industrial Pottage.

Sandwiched between stirring quotations from the Founding Fathers, these essays bear such titles as The Control of Trends in the Racial Composition of the American People, The Howl for Cheap Mexican Labor, and The Permanent Menace From Europe (of Slavic and Jewish emigration).

Among these offerings appears an essay called The French-Canadian Invasion by Robert C. Dexter, Ph.D, dealing with Franco-Americans in New England. Dexter’s is among the book’s milder chapters tucked amid eugenicist screeds. Despite his measured tone, Dexter declares that the New England Franco-Americans of his day, “have certain peculiar characteristics which tend to make them far more difficult of assimilation” than other immigrant groups. (71)*

In his discussion of these “peculiar characteristics” Dexter sounds familiar themes such as the proximity of the Franco-American’s Québec homeland (he omits to mention the Acadian homeland of many Franco-Americans) and the famed “fecundity of the race.” He also revives a moderate form of the image popular in the 1880s and 1890s of a French-Canadian horde poised to dominate the northeastern States.

Dexter also offers this accurate observation:

English-speaking Canada has herself never assimilated the French-Canadians.They have always remained a separate group, speaking their own language and retaining their own culture and having succeeded in withstanding whatever pressure toward cultural unity there has been in the Dominion they desire to remain a separate group in the United States. (71f)

The writer quotes a Franco-American journalist and leading light of the late 19th c., Ferdinand Gagnon:

"Allegiance to a power does not change the origin of a subject or of a citizen; it only changes his political condition. In taking the oath of fidelity to the Constitution of the United States nothing changes in my life…What does take place then? There is simply concluded a political contract  which obliges me to observe the laws of the country …to defend its flag and to work for the greater prosperity of the nation … Nothing else passes between my conscience and my oath of allegiance." (74)

The history of French North America created a context for Gagnon to observe a distinction between one’s “origin” and one’s “country.” Gagnon believes that one’s nation may be distinct from the political entity to which one pledges allegiance, and his words to this effect echo the sentiment of an Acadien after 1713 or a Canadien after 1763. Gagnon writes of the allegiance “of a subject or of a citizen,” the first term applying to Canada and the second to the USA. The nation may endure in more than one “political condition.”

Page from Grant's and Davison's
The Alien In Our Midst

Since the 18th c., the French North Americans have been nations without a state. In emphasizing the continuity of national identity, in whatever political context it might inhabit, Gagnon’s generation retained the traditional survivance ideology of its forebears.

Gagnon’s text raises the question of what remains of participation in a modern Constitutional State, if we subtract adherence to the law, productive participation in the economy and, Gagnon adds, defense of its flag? What more could any State expect of a citizen? In Gagnon’s terms, what should “pass between a conscience and an oath of allegiance”?

But the nativists, on the pattern of Grant and Dexter, want more than mere participation, however energetic or ardent, in the politics, economics, and defense of the State. They want the immigrant to wish to exhibit the cultural cues that mirror the assimilationist’s image of an essential American.

The assimilationist wants not only the immigrant’s body but also the soul. It is necessary for the immigrant not only to act like an American, but also to think like an American, to be culturally American, whatever that might mean.

When we use the word culture we must acknowledge the breadth we are encompassing. Culture means not only language, religion, diet, the arts, and other equally obvious manifestations, but also such day to day matters as the volume with which one speaks; how close one stands to other people in casual interactions; how one responds in public meetings or performances; how (or whether) one negotiates; the rhythm of conversation; relationship to work; how one arranges one’s home and surroundings; the degree of privacy or publicity around religious expression. Culture includes all of this.

The Madison Grants hold the view that cultures, in this broadest sense, are arranged in a hierarchy determined by heredity. The immigrant, no matter how hard he or she tries to assimilate to the dominant culture, will never attain to membership in Grant’s “master race.” The specimen of an "inferior" origin may aspire to the manners and mores of his or her “betters,” but their best efforts must fall short if Grant’s eugenicist theories are to hold.

In the final paragraphs of his essay, Dexter gives his prescription for turning back the “French-Canadian invasion” of New England: forced assimilation of the generations born in the USA by means of the public schools. Dexter prefers, in fact, that children be required to attend public schools where English is the language of instruction.

He would require also, contrary to the traditions of New England, regulation of schools at the state level as a means of circumventing Franco-American control of school boards in municipalities where they comprise the majority.

Dexter mentions the strong interest of the Franco-Americans in educational policy since both they and Dexter recognize that schools are the incubators of the spirit. If assimilation includes the internal as well as the external, the private as well as the public, then formation is the key, and the schools must be the first line of defense against cultural “invasion.”

This bone of contention remains today: is there a cultural requirement for citizenship in a Constitutional State? Or is it, as Gagnon held, in toto a product of a social contract, a transaction entailing certain rights and related responsibilities and nothing more?

Reading Grant’s and Davison’s treatment of “the alien in our midst” it is startling how little the terms of this debate have changed in the better part of a century.

* Madison Grant and Charles Stewart Davison, The Alien In Our Midst or Selling Our Birthright For a Mess of Industrial Pottage (New York: Galton, 1930). Parenthetical page numbers refer to this book.