Controlling Heredity

Charles Davenport's Defects Found in Drafted Men

Surgeon-General’s Office, United States
Defects Found in Drafted Men. Statistical Information Compiled from the Draft Records Showing the Physical Condition of the Men Registered...By Albert G. Love...and Charles B. Davenport
Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 1920.
Depository W 44.2:D 78/2
University of Missouri Libraries
University of Missouri
Full text in Google Books

This 1920 study of the men called by the selective service for the U.S. Army upon America’s entry into the Great War was ordered by the War Department, and it employed as its eugenics specialist, Charles Davenport. The study looked at many types of physical, psychological, and mental factors within this part of the male population of the United States.

The conclusion of the analysis was than an inordinately high proportion of U.S. Army draftees were "defective" and below average in physical fitness and psychological or mental readiness. Davenport and his collegues also concluded that much of the American male population was not equipped for participatory democracy. This test of U.S. soldiers was thoroughly challenged at the time due to suspect analytical methods.

Plate XXII shows the rate and location by state of draftees with functional nervous diseases such as neurasthenia, neurosis, and hysteria. Plate XXIII shows the tabulation of draftees’ mental disorders as a function of the subjects’ state of origin.