The Black Stork

Eugenics Popularization
EXCERPT:
Steve Selden, University of Maryland

Eugenic ideology was deeply embedded in American popular culture during the 1920s and 1930s. For example, on Saturday night, high school students might go to the cinema to see "The Black Stork" – a film that supported eugenic sterilization. In church on Sunday, they might listen to a sermon selected for an award by the American Eugenics Society – learning that human improvement required marriages of society's "best" with the "best."

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News
•THE GENE WARS, by Robert Cook-Deegan, ©1994, 416 p., full-text PDF available
•EUGENICAL STERILIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES, by Harry H. Laughlin, full text PDF,

Harry H. Laughlin bio
EXCERPT:
Laughlin's Eugenical Sterilization in the United States established him as an expert on the topic. His model sterilization laws were used by many of the more than 30 states that passed sterilization laws. Germany's 1933 sterilization laws were also modeled after Laughlin's.

Eugenicdal Sterilization In The US 536 pages
EXCERPT:
Introduction

Dr. Harry H. Laughlin, Eugenics Associate of the Psychopathic
Laboratory of the Municipal Court of Chicago, and Eugenics Director
of Carnegie Institution of Washington, Cold Springs Harbor, N. Y., has
rendered the nation a signal service in the preparation of this work,
“Eugenical Sterilization in the United States.”

Since the rediscovery of Mendel’s Law of Heredity and the recent
advances made by the biologists and psychopathologists in respect to the
causes of mental and physical defects in the human race, with the consequent
revelation of the great role played by heredity as a producing cause, the science of eugenics has become of vital importance.

“Eugenics,” says Professor Irving Fisher, “stands against the forces
which work for racial deterioration, and for improvement and vigor,
intelligence and moral fiber of the human race. It represents the highest
form of patriotism and humanitarianism, while at the same time it
offers immediate advantages to ourselves and to our children. By eugenic
measures, for instance, our burden of taxes can be reduced by decreasing
the number of degenerates, delinquents and defectives supported in
public institutions; such measures will also increase safeguards against
crimes committed against our persons or our property.”

America, in particular, needs to protect herself against indiscriminate
immigration, criminal degenerates, and race suicide.

The success of democracy depends upon the quality of its individual
elements. If in these elements the racial values are high, government will
be equal to all the economic, educational, religious and scientific demands
of the times. If, on the contrary, there is a constant and progressive
racial degeneracy, it is only a question of time when popular self-government
will be impossible, and will be succeeded by chaos, and finally a
dictatorship.

Dr. Laughlin is well qualified for the work he has undertaken. For
twelve years he has been in immediate charge of the Eugenics Record
Office (founded in 1910 by Mrs. E. H. Harriman and since 1918 a part of
the Carnegie Institution of Washington), located at Cold Spring Harbor,
Long Island, New York. There he is engaged in organizing and conducting
eugenical investigations. He is, also, Expert Eugenics Agent
of the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization of the House of
Representatives of Washington, D. C., and recently organized the exhibits
of the Second International Congress of Eugenics in New York City.

As a product of scientific research the book will have permanent value.
The importance and usefulness of the work is not to be gauged by the [ v ]
extent of its circulation. Enough copies will be published to reach the
leaders of the medical, legal and clerical professions, the press and members
of legislative bodies.

The Municipal Court of Chicago, which has for years made an intensive
study of crime prevention, punishment and suppression, feels
privileged to be able to make another notable contribution in this field.

The courts have special functions to perform in the suppression of
crime. The first of these is to enforce the laws impartially and justly.

Incidental to this duty much original information comes to the judges of
our courts, and it has been the policy of the Municipal Court to make public
such incidental information, as the relationship between degeneracy
and crime and their relationship to heredity, through the reports of its
Psychopathic Laboratory. In the performance of this duty the Municipal
Court of Chicago has pointed out the need of the permanent segregation
of incorrigible defectives, which serves three purposes: First, the protection
of society from the individual offender; second, the protection of
the individual from himself, and, third, the restriction of propagation of
the defective type due to heredity. The alternative to segregation is to
continue to do what we have been doing, that is, incarcerate the offender
for a time, more or less brief, and then permit him freedom to repeat his
offense, and to propagate his kind.

Segregation is necessary, even though sterilization were invoked.
Sterilization protects future generations, while segregation safeguards
the present as well. The segregation of incorrigible defectives on farm
colonies as a measure of crime prevention is urgently needed in the State
of Illinois. However, in a number of states, fifteen up to the present
time, experiments have been made with sterilization. The two theories
of segregation and sterilization are not antagonistic, but both may be
invoked.

With the intention of covering every phase of crime prevention, the
Municipal Court of Chicago publishes this work as an important contribution
to that cause.

We desire to make acknowledgment to the sculptor, Charles Haag,
for the use of his “Fountain of the Ages,” to illustrate the significance
of heredity and the continuity of the blood stream.

HARRY OLSON,
Chief Justice.

Trademark Big Business v small.
EXCERPT:
Government bureaucracies aren't supposed to help big businesses hound their small competitors. But right now a mistake by the Patent and Trademark Office and some aggressive lawyering by the Nordstrom retail chain have plunged a small online retailer into a costly morass. It illustrates the sometimes sharp divide between the law and how the law actually works.

US patent or trademark provides protection only in US
EXCERPT:
the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) indicates that only 15 percent of small businesses that do business overseas know that that a U.S. patent or trademark provides protection only in the United States.

Patents are granted to an inventor, or a group of inventors, but not to companies
EXCERPT:

4. INVENTORS vs DEVELOPERS
Patents are granted to an inventor, or a group of inventors, but not to companies. Most patents however end up being assigned over to companies. Traditionally we think of the inventor as being a slightly eccentric and crazy thinker who's mind is constantly buzzing with new ideas. Most successful inventions however are dreamed up and perfected in development departments of companies. Such company inventors generally proceed with their inventing in a much more sophisticated way. They often know what competing products are on the market already. Some companies have full time patent engineers and lawyers on staff. These people already have hundreds or even thousands of competing patents on file. They have a good knowledge of what products the company has already developed and which new patents they could get by weaving through all the competing inventions.