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Sarah Palin, Eugenics, the CNP and The Pioneer Fund

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<H1 title="The Seduction of Sarah Palin: Eugenics, CNP, and the Pioneer Fund">The Seduction of Sarah Palin: Eugenics, CNP, and the Pioneer Fund </H1>- by Paul & Phillip D. Collins, October 13th, 2008 Left to right: Wickliffe Preston Draper (1891-1972), founder and benefactor of the Pioneer Fund; on the Board of Directors (1937-72). Harry Hamilton Laughlin (1880-1943), Pres. (1927-28) and Dir. (1923-39) of the American Eugenics Society; Superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office in (1910-21) and its Director (1921-40); first president of the Pioneer Fund (1937-41). Frederick Henry Osborn (1890-1981), second president of the Pioneer Fund (1941–1958); Pres. (1946-52) and Dir. (1969-72) of the American Eugenics Society.

No one on America's political stage today has more motivation to oppose eugenics than Sarah Palin. The Alaskan Governor and Vice-Presidential running mate has learned experientially about the sanctity of life. In April, she gave birth to a baby boy with Down syndrome (Demer, no pagination). When she first learned that the child would be born with the birth defect, Palin chose life in a situation where 90 percent of women have an abortion (no pagination). Lisa Demer has correctly described Palin "as anti-abortion as a politician can be" (no pagination).

It was, therefore, disturbing to learn that Palin had been vetted by a secretive group with connections to the eugenics movement. In a September 1, 2008 article for The Nation, Max Blumenthal reported that the "members of the Council for National Policy are the hidden hand behind McCain's Palin pick" (no pagination). According to Blumenthal, the Council for National Policy (CNP) met at a hotel in downtown Minneapolis the week of the Democratic National Convention to acquaint themselves with Palin (no pagination). The article also stated that the Palin selection secured McCain the support of the conservative movement and that CNP participant James Dobson "may soon emerge from his bunker in Colorado Springs to endorse McCain, providing the Republican nominee with the backing of the Christian right's single most influential figure" (no pagination).

For many people on the left, it is hard to swallow the idea that the CNP has ties to the eugenics movement. After all, CNP participants such as James Dobson, Tim LaHaye, and Alan Keyes are considered to be stalwart pro-lifers. George W. Bush even put in an appearance at a secret meeting of the CNP in 2000 promising to nominate only pro-life judges (no pagination). There is a body of evidence, however, that suggests that all the pro-life rhetoric and pro-life participants may be mere window dressing to hide the sinister goal of creating a master race.

Jesse Helms and the Pioneer Fund

The CNP connects to the eugenics movement through deceased Senator Jesse Helms. Helms was on the CNP Board of Governors in 1982 and was a member in 1984-1985, 1988, 1996, 1998, and 1999 ("The Council for National Policy: Selected Member Biographies," no pagination). Throughout his political career, Helms collaborated closely with two other CNP participants: Thomas Ellis and R.E. Carter-Wrenn (no pagination). In the 1980s, the three CNP participants teamed with Harry Weyher and Marion Parrott to form an elaborate, multimillion dollar network of corporations, political action committees, ad hoc groups, and foundations ("Race Science and the Pioneer Fund," no pagination). According to the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism, the network's leadership "especially, Harry Weyher, Thomas F. Ellis and Marion A. Parrott are part of an interlocking set of directorates and associates linking the Pioneer Fund to Jesse Helm's high-tech political machine" (no pagination). In the 1980s, Ellis' Coalition for Freedom, a component of the Jesse Helms political machine, received grants totaling $195,000 from the Pioneer Fund (Begos, no pagination).

What exactly is the Pioneer Fund? The story of this mysterious private trust fund begins with a reclusive philanthropist named Wickliffe Draper. Draper was born in Massachusetts in 1891 (no pagination). The product of a mixture of old Kentucky and Puritan blood, Draper was convinced that his family tree constituted a superior stock of humanity that should be considered the true Americans (no pagination). In the 1920s, Draper inherited a multimillion-dollar textile fortune (no pagination). After attending the Nazis' International Congress for the Scientific Investigation of Population Problems in 1935 Berlin, Draper decided to devote a large portion of his fortune to eugenics and race science (no pagination).It would be no exaggeration to say that Draper was drawing his inspiration from mass murderers. Wilhelm Frick, a war criminal convicted during the Nuremberg trials, was the Honorary Chairman at the 1935 meeting that Draper attended in Berlin (no pagination).

In 1937, Draper joined with eugenicists Harry Laughlin and Frederick Osborn to form the Pioneer Fund (no pagination). The Fund helped the crusade for nationwide eugenical regimentation through the distribution of grants (no pagination). In its first year, the Pioneer Fund had in its budget two German films promoting the theme of eugenics. One of those films, entitled The Hereditary Defective, was shown at 28 high schools throughout the United States thanks to the efforts of Harry Laughlin (no pagination). Draper's money was also used to print a special edition of Earnest Sevier Cox's "White America" (no pagination). The racist tract was distributed to every member of the 1937 Congress (no pagination).

For Draper, "race betterment" meant disenfranchisement for blacks. One of the white supremacist academics Draper recruited to his cause was segregationist and Chair of Psychology at Colombia University Henry Garrett. Garrett served as a witness supporting segregation in the 1952 Davis v. County School Board ("Race Science and the Pioneer Fund," no pagination). Davis v. County School Board became part of a much larger, historic case, Brown v. the Board of Education (no pagination). In 1964, the Missippi Sovereignty Commission used $215,000 given to it by Draper in an attempt to prevent the Civil Rights Act from passing (Begos, no pagination). In 1977, North Iowa professor Dr. Ralph Scott used Pioneer Fund money to finance anti-busing, anti-school integration seminars (Lichtenstein, no pagination).

Draper may have even tried to use internal security organs to advance his agenda. According journalist Grace Lichtenstein, Draper supported Representative Francis E. Walter, the chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), throughout the 1950s and 1960s (no pagination). In 1960 HUAC staff director Richard Arens was forced to leave his Congressional job when it was discovered that he was a paid consultant to Draper (no pagination). Draper may have contributed to the corruption of national security politics and the discrediting and dismantling of America's internal security apparatus. So it is that Paul Wolfowitz, during his time as Deputy Defense Secretary, could have a "discreet romance" with a woman who was born in Tunisia and raised in Saudi Arabia without anyone asking any serious questions about penetration and compromising of internal security (Leiby, no pagination).

Probably the most high profile case involving the Pioneer Fund was the publishing of The Bell Curve in 1994. The controversial best-seller asserted that whites were genetically superior to blacks and that blacks were inclined to have lower IQs (Begos, no pagination). Anglo-American race scientists William Shockley, Hans J. Eysenck, Arthur Jensen, Roger Pearson, Richard Lynn, J. Philippe Rushton, R. Travis Osborne, Linda Gottfredson, Robert A. Gordon, Daniel R. Vining Jr., Michael Levin, and Seymour Itzkopp were all cited in The Bell Curve and were all recipients of Pioneer Fund money ("Race Science and the Pioneer Fund," no pagination). According to a November 22, 1994 ABC World News Tonight report, the researchers cited The Bell Curve received $3.5 million from the Pioneer Fund ("The Bell Curve and the Pioneer Fund," no pagination).

One would think that with the passing of Draper, Laughlin, and Weyher, the Pioneer Fund would have begun pursuing nobler endeavors. Unfortunately, old habits seem to die hard. In February 2006, current Pioneer Fund head J. Philippe Rushton spoke at an American Renaissance conference held at the Hyatt Dulles Hotel in Herndon, Virginia (Williams, no pagination). American Renaissance is a white supremacist magazine headed up by Jared Taylor that promotes the "clear conception of the United States as a nation ruled by and for whites" (no pagination). Rushton was surrounded by such notable white supremacists as former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke, racist talk show host Hal Turner, Director of the Holocaust denying Institute for Historical Review Mark Weber, former neo-Nazi National Alliance members David Pringle and National Vanguard's Kevin Strom, and former Klansman and head of white supremacist website Stormfront.org Don Black (no pagination). Rushton used the occasion to speak about IQ tests proving whites' supposed genetic superiority over blacks (no pagination).

The Pioneer Fund and the Power Elite

While many might consider the Pioneer Fund merely a fringe organization, it is far from being a collection of disenfranchised, racist misfits. Pioneer Fund principal Harry Laughlin was also the superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) (Chaitkin 551). The ERO was established on 80 acres of land and in buildings donated by E.H. Harriman's widow, Mary A. Harriman (550). The Harrimans were the most powerful family in the Democratic party at one time and their dynasty belongs among the ranks of the power elite. Like most elitists, the Harrimans possessed a fascination with eugenics. Averell Harriman was on the Executive Committee of New Yorks' American Museum of Natural History. In 1921, Harriman and the rest of the Museum Executive Committee hosted the Second International Eugenics Congress (551). Averell also contributed $1,000 to the conference and his mother and sister were primary hostesses at the conference (551).

The trend was repeated in 1932 when the Third International Eugenics Congress was held at New York's American Museum of Natural History (552). Once again, the Harrimans financed the conference and Averell's mother and sister acted as hostesses (552). At the conference, Dr. Ernst Rudin, the man responsible for Nazi Germany's sterilization program, was recognized with a medal and was elected President of the International Federation of Eugenics Societies (552). There is no small connection between Laughlin, the Harrimans, and the Nazis. When writing the Nazi's sterilization law entitled "For the Protection of German Blood and German Honor," Rudin relied heavily on the "Model Sterilization Law" drafted for the ERO by Laughlin (551). Laughlin was attempting to achieve the ERO's goal of producing "the perfect man" by 1980 through the sterilization of 15 million Americans (551). Among those targeted by Laughlin's law were "orphans, the homeless, ne'er-do-wells, and tramps" (552). Ironically, Laughlin would later discover that he had epilepsy, a condition his model law identified as a criterion for sterilization ("Harry Laughlin," no pagination).

George H.W. Bush, the consummate oligarch, gave an audience to recipients of the Pioneer Fund. In 1969, then-chairman of the Republican Task Force on Earth Resources and Population Bush invited Professors William Shockley and Arthur Jensen to appear before the committee and share their views concerning race and eugenics (52). According to the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism, Shockley would go on to "receive an estimated $188,710 from the Pioneer Fund between 1971 and 1978" and Jensen, Shockley's recruit into race science, received more than a million dollars from the Pioneer Fund over three decades ("Race Science and the Pioneer Fund," no pagination). For Bush, the growth of the black population was obviously a threat, as is evidenced by the views held by Shockley and Jensen. In the same year that the GOP task force supplied him with a congressional platform, Shockley wrote:

"Our nobly intended welfare programs may be encouraging dysgenics-retrogressive evolution through disproportionate reproduction of the genetically disadvantage… We fear that 'fatuous beliefs' in the power of welfare money, unaided by eugenic foresight, may contribute to a decline of human quality for all segments of society." (Tarpley and Chaitkin 200)

To counter this tide of so-called "retrogressive evolution," Shockley proposed a "Bonus Sterilization Plan" (Tarpley and Chaitkin 200). Individuals with genetic defects, chronic diseases, or drug and alcohol addiction would be paid for volunteering to be sterilized (200). Chaitkin and Tarpley elaborate:

"If [the government paid] a bonus rate of $1,000 for each point below 100 IQ, $30,000 put in trust for some 70 IQ moron of 20-child potential, it might return $250,000 to taxpayers in reduced cost of mental retardation care," Shockley said. (200).

True to the Draper tradition, Shockley identified African-Americans as the main target of his mass sterilization plan. Tarpley and Chaitkin share Shockley's racist views:

"If those blacks with the least amount of Caucasian genes are in fact the most prolific and the least intelligent, the genetic enslavement will be the destiny of their next generation," he wrote. Looking at the recent past, Shockley said in 1967: "The lesson to be drawn from Nazi history is the value of free speech, not that eugenics is intolerable." (200)

Why would Bush give Pioneer Fund recipients with radical racist views a platform? Tarpley and Chaitkin provide an accurate explanation:

Oligarchy… subsumes the self-conception of the oligarch as belonging to a special, exalted breed of mankind, one that is superior to the common rule of mankind as a matter of hereditary, genetic superiority. This mentality generally goes together with a fascination for eugenics, race science and just plain racism as a means of building a case that one's own family tree and racial stock are indeed superior. (9-10)

Conclusion

The majority of conservatives have been duped and Palin is no exception to that rule. If Palin does not want to become involved with the kind of dirty politics and radical agenda that have made most Americans jaded and cynical, she must recognize the CNP for what it really is. Under the CNP's mask lies an elite combine that is mobilizing unwitting conservatives and grassroots activists behind an elite agenda. Part of that agenda is eugenics.

Sources Cited

About the Authors

Phillip D. Collins acted as the editor for The Hidden Face of Terrorism. He co-authored the book The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship, which is available at www.amazon.com. It is also available as an E-book at www.4acloserlook.com. Phillip has also written articles for Paranoia Magazine, MKzine, News With Views, B.I.P.E.D.: The Official Website of Darwinian Dissent and Conspiracy Archive. He has also been interviewed on several radio programs, including A Closer Look, Peering Into Darkness, From the Grassy Knoll, Frankly Speaking, the ByteShow, and Sphinx Radio.

In 1999, Phillip earned an Associate degree of Arts and Science. In 2006, he earned a bachelor's degree with a major in communication studies and liberal studies along with a minor in philosophy. During the course of his seven-year college career, Phillip has studied philosophy, religion, political science, semiotics, journalism, theatre, and classic literature. He recently completed a collection of short stories, poetry, and prose entitled Expansive Thoughts. Readers can learn more about it at www.expansivethoughts.com.

Paul D. Collins has studied suppressed history and the shadowy undercurrents of world political dynamics for roughly eleven years. In 1999, he earned his Associate of Arts and Science degree. In 2006, he completed his bachelor's degree with a major in liberal studies and a minor political science. Paul has authored another book entitled The Hidden Face of Terrorism: The Dark Side of Social Engineering, From Antiquity to September 11. Published in November 2002, the book is available online from www.1stbooks.com, barnesandnoble.com, and also amazon.com. It can be purchased as an e-book (ISBN 1-4033-6798-1) or in paperback format (ISBN 1-4033-6799-X). Paul also co-authored The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship.

PERFECTIBILISTS: The 18th Century Bavarian Order of the Illuminati, by Terry Melanson

The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship, by Paul & Phillip Collins

Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism, by Abbe Barruel

Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith, by James H. Billington

America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones, by Antony C. Sutton

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<H1 title="The Seduction of Sarah Palin: Eugenics, CNP, and the Pioneer Fund">The Seduction of Sarah Palin: Eugenics, CNP, and the Pioneer Fund </H1>- by Paul & Phillip D. Collins, October 13th, 2008 Left to right: Wickliffe Preston Draper (1891-1972), founder and benefactor of the Pioneer Fund; on the Board of Directors (1937-72). Harry Hamilton Laughlin (1880-1943), Pres. (1927-28) and Dir. (1923-39) of the American Eugenics Society; Superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office in (1910-21) and its Director (1921-40); first president of the Pioneer Fund (1937-41). Frederick Henry Osborn (1890-1981), second president of the Pioneer Fund (1941–1958); Pres. (1946-52) and Dir. (1969-72) of the American Eugenics Society.

No one on America's political stage today has more motivation to oppose eugenics than Sarah Palin. The Alaskan Governor and Vice-Presidential running mate has learned experientially about the sanctity of life. In April, she gave birth to a baby boy with Down syndrome. When she first learned that the child would be born with the birth defect, Palin chose life in a situation where 90 percent of women have an abortion. Lisa Demer has correctly described Palin "as anti-abortion as a politician can be".

It was, therefore, disturbing to learn that Palin had been vetted by a secretive group with connections to the eugenics movement. In a September 1, 2008 article for The Nation, Max Blumenthal reported that the "members of the Council for National Policy are the hidden hand behind McCain's Palin pick". According to Blumenthal, the Council for National Policy (CNP) met at a hotel in downtown Minneapolis the week of the Democratic National Convention to acquaint themselves with Palin. The article also stated that the Palin selection secured McCain the support of the conservative movement and that CNP participant James Dobson "may soon emerge from his bunker in Colorado Springs to endorse McCain, providing the Republican nominee with the backing of the Christian right's single most influential figure".

For many people on the left, it is hard to swallow the idea that the CNP has ties to the eugenics movement. After all, CNP participants such as James Dobson, Tim LaHaye, and Alan Keyes are considered to be stalwart pro-lifers. George W. Bush even put in an appearance at a secret meeting of the CNP in 2000 promising to nominate only pro-life judges. There is a body of evidence, however, that suggests that all the pro-life rhetoric and pro-life participants may be mere window dressing to hide the sinister goal of creating a master race.

Jesse Helms and the Pioneer Fund

The CNP connects to the eugenics movement through deceased Senator Jesse Helms. Helms was on the CNP Board of Governors in 1982 and was a member in 1984-1985, 1988, 1996, 1998, and 1999 ("The Council for National Policy: Selected Member Biographies,". Throughout his political career, Helms collaborated closely with two other CNP participants: Thomas Ellis and R.E. Carter-Wrenn. In the 1980s, the three CNP participants teamed with Harry Weyher and Marion Parrott to form an elaborate, multimillion dollar network of corporations, political action committees, ad hoc groups, and foundations ("Race Science and the Pioneer Fund,". According to the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism, the network's leadership "especially, Harry Weyher, Thomas F. Ellis and Marion A. Parrott are part of an interlocking set of directorates and associates linking the Pioneer Fund to Jesse Helm's high-tech political machine". In the 1980s, Ellis' Coalition for Freedom, a component of the Jesse Helms political machine, received grants totaling $195,000 from the Pioneer Fund.

What exactly is the Pioneer Fund? The story of this mysterious private trust fund begins with a reclusive philanthropist named Wickliffe Draper. Draper was born in Massachusetts in 1891. The product of a mixture of old Kentucky and Puritan blood, Draper was convinced that his family tree constituted a superior stock of humanity that should be considered the true Americans. In the 1920s, Draper inherited a multimillion-dollar textile fortune. After attending the Nazis' International Congress for the Scientific Investigation of Population Problems in 1935 Berlin, Draper decided to devote a large portion of his fortune to eugenics and race science.It would be no exaggeration to say that Draper was drawing his inspiration from mass murderers. Wilhelm Frick, a war criminal convicted during the Nuremberg trials, was the Honorary Chairman at the 1935 meeting that Draper attended in Berlin.

In 1937, Draper joined with eugenicists Harry Laughlin and Frederick Osborn to form the Pioneer Fund. The Fund helped the crusade for nationwide eugenical regimentation through the distribution of grants (no pagination). In its first year, the Pioneer Fund had in its budget two German films promoting the theme of eugenics. One of those films, entitled The Hereditary Defective, was shown at 28 high schools throughout the United States thanks to the efforts of Harry Laughlin (no pagination). Draper's money was also used to print a special edition of Earnest Sevier Cox's "White America" (no pagination). The racist tract was distributed to every member of the 1937 Congress (no pagination).

For Draper, "race betterment" meant disenfranchisement for blacks. One of the white supremacist academics Draper recruited to his cause was segregationist and Chair of Psychology at Colombia University Henry Garrett. Garrett served as a witness supporting segregation in the 1952 Davis v. County School Board ("Race Science and the Pioneer Fund," no pagination). Davis v. County School Board became part of a much larger, historic case, Brown v. the Board of Education (no pagination). In 1964, the Missippi Sovereignty Commission used $215,000 given to it by Draper in an attempt to prevent the Civil Rights Act from passing (Begos, no pagination). In 1977, North Iowa professor Dr. Ralph Scott used Pioneer Fund money to finance anti-busing, anti-school integration seminars (Lichtenstein, no pagination).

Draper may have even tried to use internal security organs to advance his agenda. According journalist Grace Lichtenstein, Draper supported Representative Francis E. Walter, the chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), throughout the 1950s and 1960s (no pagination). In 1960 HUAC staff director Richard Arens was forced to leave his Congressional job when it was discovered that he was a paid consultant to Draper (no pagination). Draper may have contributed to the corruption of national security politics and the discrediting and dismantling of America's internal security apparatus. So it is that Paul Wolfowitz, during his time as Deputy Defense Secretary, could have a "discreet romance" with a woman who was born in Tunisia and raised in Saudi Arabia without anyone asking any serious questions about penetration and compromising of internal security (Leiby, no pagination).

Probably the most high profile case involving the Pioneer Fund was the publishing of The Bell Curve in 1994. The controversial best-seller asserted that whites were genetically superior to blacks and that blacks were inclined to have lower IQs (Begos, no pagination). Anglo-American race scientists William Shockley, Hans J. Eysenck, Arthur Jensen, Roger Pearson, Richard Lynn, J. Philippe Rushton, R. Travis Osborne, Linda Gottfredson, Robert A. Gordon, Daniel R. Vining Jr., Michael Levin, and Seymour Itzkopp were all cited in The Bell Curve and were all recipients of Pioneer Fund money ("Race Science and the Pioneer Fund," no pagination). According to a November 22, 1994 ABC World News Tonight report, the researchers cited The Bell Curve received $3.5 million from the Pioneer Fund ("The Bell Curve and the Pioneer Fund," no pagination).

One would think that with the passing of Draper, Laughlin, and Weyher, the Pioneer Fund would have begun pursuing nobler endeavors. Unfortunately, old habits seem to die hard. In February 2006, current Pioneer Fund head J. Philippe Rushton spoke at an American Renaissance conference held at the Hyatt Dulles Hotel in Herndon, Virginia (Williams, no pagination). American Renaissance is a white supremacist magazine headed up by Jared Taylor that promotes the "clear conception of the United States as a nation ruled by and for whites" (no pagination). Rushton was surrounded by such notable white supremacists as former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke, racist talk show host Hal Turner, Director of the Holocaust denying Institute for Historical Review Mark Weber, former neo-Nazi National Alliance members David Pringle and National Vanguard's Kevin Strom, and former Klansman and head of white supremacist website Stormfront.org Don Black (no pagination). Rushton used the occasion to speak about IQ tests proving whites' supposed genetic superiority over blacks (no pagination).

The Pioneer Fund and the Power Elite

While many might consider the Pioneer Fund merely a fringe organization, it is far from being a collection of disenfranchised, racist misfits. Pioneer Fund principal Harry Laughlin was also the superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) (Chaitkin 551). The ERO was established on 80 acres of land and in buildings donated by E.H. Harriman's widow, Mary A. Harriman (550). The Harrimans were the most powerful family in the Democratic party at one time and their dynasty belongs among the ranks of the power elite. Like most elitists, the Harrimans possessed a fascination with eugenics. Averell Harriman was on the Executive Committee of New Yorks' American Museum of Natural History. In 1921, Harriman and the rest of the Museum Executive Committee hosted the Second International Eugenics Congress (551). Averell also contributed $1,000 to the conference and his mother and sister were primary hostesses at the conference (551).

The trend was repeated in 1932 when the Third International Eugenics Congress was held at New York's American Museum of Natural History (552). Once again, the Harrimans financed the conference and Averell's mother and sister acted as hostesses (552). At the conference, Dr. Ernst Rudin, the man responsible for Nazi Germany's sterilization program, was recognized with a medal and was elected President of the International Federation of Eugenics Societies (552). There is no small connection between Laughlin, the Harrimans, and the Nazis. When writing the Nazi's sterilization law entitled "For the Protection of German Blood and German Honor," Rudin relied heavily on the "Model Sterilization Law" drafted for the ERO by Laughlin (551). Laughlin was attempting to achieve the ERO's goal of producing "the perfect man" by 1980 through the sterilization of 15 million Americans (551). Among those targeted by Laughlin's law were "orphans, the homeless, ne'er-do-wells, and tramps" (552). Ironically, Laughlin would later discover that he had epilepsy, a condition his model law identified as a criterion for sterilization ("Harry Laughlin," no pagination).

George H.W. Bush, the consummate oligarch, gave an audience to recipients of the Pioneer Fund. In 1969, then-chairman of the Republican Task Force on Earth Resources and Population Bush invited Professors William Shockley and Arthur Jensen to appear before the committee and share their views concerning race and eugenics (52). According to the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism, Shockley would go on to "receive an estimated $188,710 from the Pioneer Fund between 1971 and 1978" and Jensen, Shockley's recruit into race science, received more than a million dollars from the Pioneer Fund over three decades ("Race Science and the Pioneer Fund," no pagination). For Bush, the growth of the black population was obviously a threat, as is evidenced by the views held by Shockley and Jensen. In the same year that the GOP task force supplied him with a congressional platform, Shockley wrote:

"Our nobly intended welfare programs may be encouraging dysgenics-retrogressive evolution through disproportionate reproduction of the genetically disadvantage… We fear that 'fatuous beliefs' in the power of welfare money, unaided by eugenic foresight, may contribute to a decline of human quality for all segments of society." (Tarpley and Chaitkin 200)

To counter this tide of so-called "retrogressive evolution," Shockley proposed a "Bonus Sterilization Plan" (Tarpley and Chaitkin 200). Individuals with genetic defects, chronic diseases, or drug and alcohol addiction would be paid for volunteering to be sterilized (200). Chaitkin and Tarpley elaborate:

"If [the government paid] a bonus rate of $1,000 for each point below 100 IQ, $30,000 put in trust for some 70 IQ moron of 20-child potential, it might return $250,000 to taxpayers in reduced cost of mental retardation care," Shockley said. (200).

True to the Draper tradition, Shockley identified African-Americans as the main target of his mass sterilization plan. Tarpley and Chaitkin share Shockley's racist views:

"If those blacks with the least amount of Caucasian genes are in fact the most prolific and the least intelligent, the genetic enslavement will be the destiny of their next generation," he wrote. Looking at the recent past, Shockley said in 1967: "The lesson to be drawn from Nazi history is the value of free speech, not that eugenics is intolerable." (200)

Why would Bush give Pioneer Fund recipients with radical racist views a platform? Tarpley and Chaitkin provide an accurate explanation:

Oligarchy… subsumes the self-conception of the oligarch as belonging to a special, exalted breed of mankind, one that is superior to the common rule of mankind as a matter of hereditary, genetic superiority. This mentality generally goes together with a fascination for eugenics, race science and just plain racism as a means of building a case that one's own family tree and racial stock are indeed superior. (9-10)

Conclusion

The majority of conservatives have been duped and Palin is no exception to that rule. If Palin does not want to become involved with the kind of dirty politics and radical agenda that have made most Americans jaded and cynical, she must recognize the CNP for what it really is. Under the CNP's mask lies an elite combine that is mobilizing unwitting conservatives and grassroots activists behind an elite agenda. Part of that agenda is eugenics.

Sources Cited

About the Authors

Phillip D. Collins acted as the editor for The Hidden Face of Terrorism. He co-authored the book The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship, which is available at www.amazon.com. It is also available as an E-book at www.4acloserlook.com. Phillip has also written articles for Paranoia Magazine, MKzine, News With Views, B.I.P.E.D.: The Official Website of Darwinian Dissent and Conspiracy Archive. He has also been interviewed on several radio programs, including A Closer Look, Peering Into Darkness, From the Grassy Knoll, Frankly Speaking, the ByteShow, and Sphinx Radio.

In 1999, Phillip earned an Associate degree of Arts and Science. In 2006, he earned a bachelor's degree with a major in communication studies and liberal studies along with a minor in philosophy. During the course of his seven-year college career, Phillip has studied philosophy, religion, political science, semiotics, journalism, theatre, and classic literature. He recently completed a collection of short stories, poetry, and prose entitled Expansive Thoughts. Readers can learn more about it at www.expansivethoughts.com.

Paul D. Collins has studied suppressed history and the shadowy undercurrents of world political dynamics for roughly eleven years. In 1999, he earned his Associate of Arts and Science degree. In 2006, he completed his bachelor's degree with a major in liberal studies and a minor political science. Paul has authored another book entitled The Hidden Face of Terrorism: The Dark Side of Social Engineering, From Antiquity to September 11. Published in November 2002, the book is available online from www.1stbooks.com, barnesandnoble.com, and also amazon.com. It can be purchased as an e-book (ISBN 1-4033-6798-1) or in paperback format (ISBN 1-4033-6799-X). Paul also co-authored The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship.

PERFECTIBILISTS: The 18th Century Bavarian Order of the Illuminati, by Terry Melanson

The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship, by Paul & Phillip Collins

Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism, by Abbe Barruel

Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith, by James H. Billington

America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones, by Antony C. Sutton

Quick Links

Home Articles NWO New Age Paranormal Commentary Blog Contact

Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 05:11:55 -0500 (EST)

From: ODIN <odin@shadow.net>

Subject: The PIONEER FUND as PROMULGATORS of FASCISM

Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950315050741.20196E-100000@anshar.shadow.net>

From: pioneer@ids.net

The Pioneer Fund as promulgators of fascism

Editor's hyperbolic diatribe:

The Pioneer Fund was the primary financial sponsor of Proposition 187 on the California ballot. They have an extended legacy of sponsoring similar legislation over the past 57 years of their existence. The agenda that they are attempting to advance is one of fascism, repression and racism. Linkage of their past goals and ideals to their present visions for the future of America can go a long way toward stopping them in their tracks.

Note: The comments contained in braces [ ] are those of the editor. Some typographical errors in the original article have been corrected for ease of comprehension.

THE NEW YORK TIMES -

Sunday, December 11, 1977

Fund Backs Controversial Study of "Racial Betterment"

by Grace Lichtenstein
A private trust fund based in New York has for more than 20 years supported highly controversial research by a dozen scientists who believe that blacks are genetically less intelligent than whites.

The Pioneer Fund, a tax-exempt foundation incorporated in 1937 for the express purpose of research into "racial betterment," was worth more than $2 million, according to its 1975 Internal Revenue Service return. Yet several officers of the leading geneticists profession- al organization say they never heard of it. A month-long study of the Pioneer Fund's activities by The New York Times shows it has given at least $179,000 over the last 10 years to Dr. William B. Shockley, a leading proponent of the theory that whites are inher- ently more intelligent than blacks.

The money was paid through Stanford University, where professor Shockley was a Nobel Prize-winning professor of engineering science, as well as through his own personal foundation - a customary method of foundation disbursement.

Another major beneficiary is Dr. Arthur R. Jensen, an educational psychologist at the University of California, whose article in 1969 theorizing that intelligence was hereditary touched off a furor over the value of compensatory education for disadvantaged black students.

Some Others Who Got Grants

Dr. Travis Osborn of the University of Georgia, Dr. Frank C. J. McGurk and Dr. Audrey Shuey are other well-known researchers in the same area who got Pioneer grants.

Two researchers known to few specialists in the genetics field, Dr. Roger Pearson and Dr. Ralph Scott, also got substantial grants, which they declined to discuss. Neither man is a geneticist.

Theories of racial inferiority pursued by Pioneer's staff of researchers have been widely discredited in recent years. Some data developed by Cyril Burt, a British scientist, which had underpinned the theory, are now alleged by leading geneticists to be without scientific value.

In addition, at least one major association of professional geneticists has publicly decried the use of what it regards as questionable material on heredity and race to buttress political positions.

However, Burke Judd, former secretary of the Genetics Society of America, and Hope Punnett, secretary of the American Society of Human Genetics, said that in principle they were in favor of any legitimate genetics research, even when it encompasses what some feel is an extreme point of view.

"If you really believe in open research you've got to let these people do their 'research' and then let the rest of us question it," said Dr. Punnett. She said she did not take either Dr. Jensen or Dr. Shockley "too seriously" because she did not think they had developed good scientific information to support their theories.

Some Are Embarrassed

Other colleges that have accepted Pioneer grants for "eugenics and heredity" include the University of California at Berkeley, University of Georgia, University of Southern Mississippi, Randolph-Macon College, Montana College of Mineral Science and Technology and the University of Northern Iowa.

High officials of the last two schools said hey now were embarrassed by the grants. They asked to remain anonymous, on the ground that criticism by them would suggest interference with academic freedom.

It is not known whether Pioneer financed research in fields other than heredity and eugenics.

Spokesmen at all the schools who knew about the grants said they did not know the Pioneer Fun had been chartered for research into "racial betterment." Nor did those scientists who The Times was able to reach who would answer questions.

A spokesman for the University of California at Berkeley said its records showed no Pioneer Fund grants to Dr. Jensen, although it did accept a Pioneer grant for a political science professor. Dr. Jensen confirmed that some of his grants came through the university.

In each case the university, or another foundation, was named as recipient of the grants, although the actual work was done by a specific professor in residence. This is common practice in grant-giving everywhere.

However, in at least one school, Northern Iowa, the professor, Dr. Ralph Scott, used some of the money not only for research but for anti-busing, anti-school integration seminars in such off-campus places as Louisville, (KY) and Boston (MA), according to the school's grants administrator.

Question of Tax Exemption

"This might put the fund's tax-exempt status in jeopardy," an Internal Revenue Service spokesman said when asked about general rules applying to funds such as Pioneer.

Under Federal law, such funds remain tax-exempt as long as "no substantial part of the activity" is "carrying on propaganda or otherwise attempting to influence legislation."

"You're in a very sticky area," the I.R.S. spokesman replied when asked about the definition of propaganda. Pioneer Fund is currently in a tax- exempt category applying to groups exclusively charitable, religious, testing and educational. Although it has been a major "banker" in the financing of research on race and genetics, Pioneer's chief executive will not talk to reporters. Nor will some of the scientists who take its money acknowledge their connection with Pioneer. The president of Pioneer Fund is Harry F. Weyher [pronounced like "wire"], a lawyer whose office at 299 Park Avenue also is the fund's office. Questioned by telephone about Pioneer, Mr. Weyher said, "It's a client." Then he added, "I'm not going to talk to you any more," and hung up.

Mr. Weyher, several directors and the fund's founder have had long-standing connections with conservative causes or political candidates, although no one has suggested that the conservatives in question shared their interest in eugenics and heredity research.

The founder, Wickliffe [Preston] Draper, a 1913 graduate of Harvard who died in 1972, was the reclusive heir to a Massachusetts textile-machinery fortune, according to published accounts.

Two Committees Supported

In the 1950's and 1960's Mr. Draper supported two now-defunct committees that gave grants for genetics research. Mr. Weyher was his lawyer. The committee members included Representative Francis E. Walter, chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee [HUAC]; Henry E. Garrett, an educator known for his belief in the genetic inferiority of blacks, and Senator James O. Eastland of Mississippi.

When it was disclosed in 1960 that Richard Arens, staff director for the Un-American Activities Committee, was also a paid consultant to the Draper- financed committees, Mr. Arens was forced to leave his Congressional job.

In 1960 published reports quoted some leading American geneticists as saying they had turned down requests from Mr. Draper to do research into theories of racial inferiority among blacks.

Mr. Weyher, in a newspaper interview at the time, said Mr. Draper had already sponsored a book on restricting immigration and another on the intelligence of blacks by Dr. Shuey, a retired professor at Randolph- Macon Woman's College.

Mr. Draper also gave money to right wing political candidates, including the late Representative Donald Bruce [Republican] of Indiana, and the late Representative Walter, as well as to conservative lobbying organiza- tions such as the American Coalition of Patriotic Societies.

When Mr. Draper died his estate turned over $1.4 million to the Pioneer Fund. Among two men listed as directors of Pioneer in 1975, the most recent year for which Internal Revenue Service records are available, is John B. Trevor, [Jr.] of New York, [whose father was] a founder of the American Coalition of Patriotic Societies, adviser to Billy James Hargis' Christian Crusade and author of an article on South Africa that appeared in The Citizen, the publication of the White Citizens' Councils.

Testifying against more liberal immigration laws in 1965, Mr. Trevor warned against "a conglomeration of racial and ethnic elements" that he said led to "a serious culture decline."

The other Pioneer director [in 1975] is Thomas F. Ellis of Raleigh, N.C., manager of [senator] Jesse Helm's 1972 campaign for Senator and an impor- tant backer of Ronald Reagan's 1976 Presidential campaign.

Pioneer-sponsored research in eugenics, a movement devoted to improving the human species through control of hereditary factors in mating, and dysgenics the study of trends in population leading to the deterioration of hered- itary , is a subject of much dispute in the genetics field.

An 'Inescapable Opinion'

Dr. Shockley, co-inventor of the transistor, has for years been collecting material on eugenics and dysgenics research. He said in a telephone inter- view a few days ago from his home in Palo Alto, Calif., that he had reached "the inescapable opinion that a major cause of American Negroes' intellectual and social deficits is hereditary and racially genetic in origin."

This, he continued, "is not remediable to a major degree by practical improvements in environment," such as better schools, jobs or living con- ditions.

He said he was "very grateful" for Pioneer's grants. A spokesman for Stan- ford said that $179,000 over 10 years to Dr. Shockley from Pioneer sounded correct, although the school did not have an exact dollar figure.

The views of Dr. Shockley and Dr. Jensen and their supporters, have come under attack recently from, among other sources, the Genetics Society of America, a leading professional organization. In July 1976 it published a statement of its committee on genetics, race and intelligence that was endorsed by nearly 1,400 members.

"In our views there is no convincing evidence as to whether there is or is not an appreciable genetic difference in intelligence between races," it said.

"Well designed research... may yield valid and socially useful results and should not be discouraged. We feel that geneticists can and must also speak out against the misuse of genetics for political purposes and the drawing of social conclusions from inadequate data."

Genetics and Busing

When informed about Dr. Scott's activities on busing at Northern Iowa, Professor Judd said it sounded contrary to normal academic practices for an educational, tax-exempt foundation to finance genetics research linked to the school-busing controversy. "But I don't have enough information," he added.

According to Northern Iowa officials, Dr. Scott is studying "forced busing and its relationship to genetic aspects of educability." In this context he sent a graduate student to Mississippi and held seminars on busing, according to sources at the university.

Dr. Scott, a professor of education, refused to comment on his research and to say whether its results had been published anywhere.

Roger Pearson, a British-educated economist who has been the beneficiary of two Pioneer grants for work while he was dean at Montana Tech, also refused to talk about his research.

Such nonresponses are unusual in the field of academic research openly sponsored by tax-exempt foundations. Standford, for example, has a policy stating that "findings and conclusions" of research supported by outside grants "should be available for scrutiny and criticism.

Dr. Pearson, who served for the 1974-1975 academic year as dean at Montana Tech before leaving by mutual consent in a disagreement over educational goals, got $60,000 from Pioneer while he was there.

Montana Tech officials said they had no idea that he apparently was the same man who some years ago edited Western Destiny, a journal with many pro-South Africa, anti-Communist and anti-racial mixing articles and who wrote a number of pamphlets for the conservative-oriented Noontide Press such as "Eugenics and Race" and "Early Civilizations of the Nordic Race."

How many goals of Hitler's Third Reich are mentioned in this article?

  1. Anti-immigration legislation, sentiments and testimony
  2. Anti-civil rights legislation, sentiments and activities
  3. Anti-minority pseudo scientific research into racial inferiority
  4. Anti-communist and anti-liberal agendas of the radical right
  5. Attempts at genetic manipulation by pseudo science towards a Master Race
  6. Use of "internal security" at HUAC as a direct smokescreen for racism
  7. Supporting the most anti-union Senator who ever lived in Jesse Helms
  8. Using the veneer of "academic respectability" and "science" for racism

Wickliffe Preston Draper, the founder of The Pioneer Fund, is the epitome of an American Hitler in the guise of a philanthropic and well educated millionaire. His family owned Draper Corporation, in Hopedale, MA and both North and South Carolina and he was a staunch anti-Union activist from the early days of Sacco and Vanzetti Trial in Dedham, MA only 30 miles from his hometown of Hopedale, MA in the heart of the Blackstone Valley which was the home of the Industrial Revolution. He was also among the most ardent and vehement racists and anti-civil rights advocates in the history of this cause from as early as the 1930's and perhaps earlier. His hatred of the United Nations, liberals, and his dislike for anyone who participated in the Nye Committees of the 1930's which attempted to punish so-called "war profiteering" by the DuPonts, led to Draper's deliberate persecution of Alger T. Hiss between 1948 and 1951 with the assistance of his cohort in racism, eugenics and white supremacy, Nathaniel Weyl, who is still alive today.

Draper's vitriolic hatred for President John F. Kennedy was epitomized by his direct financial sponsorship of several publications that led the character assassination attacks on him during the 1950's when he was a Senator from Massachusetts. These included Human Events, Right magazine, Noontide Press, The American Mercury and comparable rightist publications ostensibly owned and operated by The Liberty Lobby or affiliates, the foremost racist, proto-fascist and anti-Semitic organization that has ever existed in a Democracy. Only a Democracy could be brought to its knees by the sinister forces of fascism, operating under the protection of the First Amendment to the Constitution. This is a very sad commentary on our times and on the foibles of our once magnificent system of egalitarian democracy.

The Draper attacks and assaults on President Kennedy intensified even more during the 1960's when he was President and culminated in the final character assassination in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.

The Draper family, in 1967 became the largest shareholder in Rockwell-Standard, which later became Rockwell International, one of the two largest defense contractors in the entire universe along with the Lockheed Corp. of Marietta, GA which is championed by Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-GA). Rockwell bought out the failing Draper Corporation, a manufacturer of textile loom machinery and equipment just before the acceleration of military activity in Vietnam and shortly before the Draper Corporation was liquidated by Rockwell as a bankrupt concern in the late 1970's. Rockets, missiles and warplanes are apparently a much easier place to make money than in the arena of textile loom equipment and textile machinery. Neither Kennedy's opposition to the Cost Plus Fixed Fee method of compensating defense contractors nor the CIA's opposition to the National Intelligence Estimates of March 22, 1963 called NIE 11-4-63 stood in the way of the plans for the future of this country as defined and designed by those in the Draper- Rockwell coalition which reached its culmination during their merger.

Draper's fascist-inspired vitriolic hatred of Communism and anything liberal led to his support of McCarthyism and the activities of HUAC, the House Un-American Activities Committee for over a decade. In the spirit of Dr. Josef Goebbels, he and his close associate at The Pioneer Fund, Dr. Harry H. Laughlin, actually created and then championed the "involuntary sterilization movement in America" the so-called "Buck vs. Bell" Supreme Court case which was favorably reviewed by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. It led directly to the involuntary sterilization of over 75,000 human beings between 1924 and 1972 in the approximately 24 states which passed similar laws at the behest and encouragement of The Pioneer Fund. Sound familiar? But the first major achievement of his work and that of Herr Laughlin, was when Hitler and Goebbels invited Laughlin to receive an honorary degree for his work in passing "The Model Eugenics Laws in America". Hitler used the Draper-inspired American Eugenics Model to pass the law which will go down in infamy as the Nuremberg Laws: "On the Prevention of Hereditarily Ill Progeny" - the so-called Holocaust Laws. Are you beginning to get the picture here? Are you willing to put your actions and money where your realistic concerns are?

The last time that Immigration laws were severely tightened was the 1924 Immigration Act which was accomplished, in my opinion, in direct anticipa- tion of the coming unrest in Europe during the 1930's and 1940's. These laws kept may legitimate refugees, all targeted for elimination by the Third Reich, from ever reaching a safe haven in the United States. The precisely identical intentions are at work today with this renewed emphasis on "Proposition 187", which is intended to become "The Model Anti-Immigration Legislation in America" and for the rest of the world. When a Rwanda or Zaire-style deliberately initiated crisis occurs in Bosnia-Herzegovina or elsewhere in the world, the intention of the sponsors of "Proposition 187" is to prevent those refugees targeted for "ethnic extinction" from ever reaching a safe haven in American or anywhere else in the free world for that matter. This is a very real and serious concern and every American who recognizes the true intentions of Proposition 187 should oppose it with their last breath and their last ounce of strength before it is too late.

Critiques and comments are solicited to our email address:

pioneer@ids.com

Edited by John Bevilaqua
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A Breed Apart: A Long-Ago Effort To Better the Species Yields Ordinary Folks

August 17, 1999

—

Pioneer Fund Tried to Spread

`Natural Endowments’

Of Top Air Force Fliers

—

`Sound and Desirable Stock’

—

The Wall Street Journal

By Douglas A. Blackmon

WARE, Mass. — Tomorrow, Ward and Darby Warburton, twin brothers born on Aug. 18, 1940, will celebrate their 59th birthdays with cake and a crowd of grandchildren gathered at the home of their 86-year-old mother near this picturesque New England mill town.

The brothers’ shared birthday marks something more than another milestone in the lives of two World War II-era babies. It also marks the start of their involvement in an odd experiment six decades ago of which the Warburton family was a mostly unwitting subject.

Long before cloned sheep, egg donors and sperm banks, a group of wealthy Northeastern conservatives embarked on an experiment with the help of the U.S. Army Air Corps to find a way to improve the human race. The group, formed in 1937, called itself the Pioneer Fund. As is spelled out in hundreds of pages of documents and letters by its founders and their associates, the Pioneer Fund, alarmed by the declining U.S. birth rate and rising immigration, was at the forefront of the eugenics movement. Like many other prominent leaders of the time, the fund’s directors were particularly concerned that "superior" Americans were not reproducing enough to pass on their "natural endowments."

So they set out to spur procreation among a group they regarded as superior indeed — military pilots and their crews. With the support of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s secretary of war, Harry H. Woodring, the group offered $4,000, about $46,000 in today’s dollars, for the education of additional children born during the year 1940 to any officer who already had at least three offspring.

The Air Corps — precursor to the U.S. Air Force — promoted the program and provided the fund’s psychologists extensive records on its officers, including training, parentage, race and religion, according to various memos and letters written among Pioneer Fund leaders and records of the experiment. By the end of 1940, a dozen qualifying infants — seven boys and five girls, including two sets of twins — had been born. The Pioneer Fund had expected bigger numbers. Looming war clouds seemed to have trumped the fund’s financial incentives. The Pioneer Fund quietly made arrangements for the children to receive their scholarships, and never contacted the families again.

The Pioneer Fund, which today remains a controversial funder of research into the roots of intelligence, says the 1940 effort was a legitimate experiment to gauge attitudes toward family size, and nothing more. The Air Force declines to comment.

But how did the kids turn out?

The Wall Street Journal was able to track down eight of the 12 born in 1940. One died as an infant. But the other seven grew up to be moderately successful citizens. Some didn’t know the background behind the payments received long ago and were vaguely troubled to learn the details. Among the seven children who survived into adulthood, there are no ranking generals and no war heroes. No criminals, either.

"My dad told me they were trying to create more fighting men," jokes Ward Warburton. "Well, I did get into a lot of fights coming up. And I could always take care of myself pretty well."

Today, the Warburton brothers are air-conditioning repairmen, each with his own successful small business here in Ware, a town of 10,000 about 25 miles from Springfield, Mass.

"I doubt we’re superior," says John F. Rawlings, an affable Seattle homebuilder, whose father became one of the first four-star generals in the Air Force and later the chairman of General Mills Inc. The younger Mr. Rawlings joined the Air Force but was too nearsighted to fly. He says he inherited the bad eyes from his mother.

The stories of the Pioneer Fund children and the largely routine lives they have led underscore the naivete of such a clumsy effort to sculpt the human race. But they also are reminders of sinister racial assumptions prevalent in mainstream America just a generation ago.

All officers in the Air Corps were white; African-Americans were barred from the Air Corps until 1941, and even then were shunted into all-black squadrons. Many early genetic researchers believed that race-mixing would damage the white race’s "germ plasm" — a human component that early scientists believed carried a race’s hereditary traits. Leaders in Nazi Germany fervently embraced such eugenic theories.

The pilot procreation plan was endorsed by an array of high-ranking military and political leaders, including Mr. Woodring, one of President Roosevelt’s top aides. Moreover, many U.S. states had laws in that era authorizing the sterilization of mentally retarded people. Conventional wisdom held that whites almost certainly were born smarter than blacks.

"Hitler thought that, too," says Michael Skeldon, another of the Pioneer Fund children. Now a supervisor at a San Antonio air-conditioner factory, Mr. Skeldon was troubled to learn what was behind the mysterious payments his family received long ago. "I find real odd this Pioneer group trying to mold people."

As it turns out, creating a better race was more complicated than the Pioneer Fund and its allies thought back in 1938. John C. Flanagan, a young researcher who became one of the most famous behavioral psychologists in the U.S. in the ensuing 50 years, supervised the 1940 experiment. (He died in 1996.) Nonetheless, scientists today say the test was fundamentally flawed; subsequent scholarship has shown that highly successful parents don’t necessarily give birth to highly successful children. And indeed, counter to the hopes of the Pioneer Fund’s directors in 1940, the lives led by the children born that year bear out precisely that idea.

The project was launched in the spring of 1937. Frederick Osborn, secretary of the Pioneer Fund and a leading proponent of racial eugenics, met at least twice with Mr. Woodring; the secretary of war encouraged the project and hooked the fund up with top military leaders, including famed aviation commander Gen. H.H. "Hap" Arnold. "Secretary Woodring is really interested," Mr. Osborn wrote to other fund directors in May 1937. A few months later, Gen. Arnold gave the fund’s experiment the green light.

At the time, the fund was new, created just months earlier with a promise of financial support from its principal founder, Wickliffe Preston Draper, heir to a Massachusetts manufacturing fortune. Mr. Draper, who died in 1972, and his support for southern segregationists were the subject of a front-page article in The Wall Street Journal on June 11.

The choice of pilots and their crews was logical enough. Military aviators were the astronauts of their day. Charles Lindbergh’s heroic 1927 crossing of the Atlantic was a fresh memory. Moreover, Mr. Draper was a veteran of World War I and an admirer of military officers. He used the title "colonel" most of his adult life. Clearly, aviators were "of sound and desirable stock," a Pioneer Fund memo asserted at the time.

Indeed, many of the fathers of the dozen children born in 1940 were high achievers. Several were among the pioneering military pilots who in the 1920s created what would become the modern U.S. Air Force. During World War II, they rose to distinction as pilots and generals. Later, some excelled as businessmen or teachers. The six who could be identified by the Journal are now dead. None of the parents appear to have known about Mr. Draper’s backing of the Pioneer Fund. Some did know vaguely that the fund sought to breed better humans; they or their children say the parents never shared the fund’s racial views. Instead, most appear to have considered the scholarships to be some kind of short-lived government benefit for high-achieving fliers.

To foster replication of such men, the Pioneer Fund first financed a detailed study in 1938 of the attitudes of about 400 Air Corps officers and their wives toward family size. It concluded that financial worry was a major reason why the military men often limited themselves to three children or fewer.

Armed with the results, the Pioneer Fund’s board met a few weeks before Christmas 1938 and approved a plan for the scholarship program. The following May, brochures outlining the project were distributed at air bases around the country.

After a qualifying child was born during 1940, the father would fill out a simple application form and mail it in. Once the fund had confirmed the birth of the child and size of its family, an "educational annuity" was established. The families were to begin receiving payments of $500 a year when the child turned 12 and continue for eight years, for a total of $4,000.

The whole thing looked dubious to some Air Corps families even then. "We just kind of chuckled about it," says Helen Ryan, an 87-year-old Air Force widow who remembers the program but had no children then and couldn’t participate. "We all thought it was kind of a big joke."

Still, a no-strings-attached grant that was bigger than most officers’ total annual pay looked good to some. And as winter lifted in 1940, word of new arrivals began trickling into the Pioneer Fund.

Mr. Skeldon was born on March 2, in a military hospital in Panama, where his father was stationed. The son would follow his father’s footsteps into the Air Force in the 1960s, but worked as a mechanic, not a pilot. Born to Maj. John J. Morrow was a son named Robert. He’s an electrician in Pennsylvania, according to his son. He couldn’t be reached.

On Aug. 18, the Warburton boys were delivered at a hospital near Dayton, Ohio. Their father, stationed at a nearby airfield, was one of the Air Corps’ most dashing "scout pilots" — the term then used for the men who flew fighter planes.

Two months later, on Oct. 17, came John Rawlings, the fourth child of Edwin Rawlings, a fast-rising officer who had been quietly hoping for a daughter. (He already had three sons.) Less than two weeks later came another set of twins, this time at Barksdale Air Force Base outside Shreveport, La., to John P. Ryan. Mr. Ryan, a future general, developed high-altitude bombing tactics used in the war. A 1943 Pat O’Brien movie, "Bombardier," was based partly on his life. The twins were girls; the first to arrive looked like her mother, Anna, so she was named Anne Marie. Her twin looked like her paternal grandmother, Mary. She became Maryann.

Today, Maryann Russo is a former teacher who for the past 17 years has worked on the factory line in a photo-processing plant in Baltimore, cutting and inspecting thousands of glossy prints. She gave up teaching elementary school because the pupils were too unruly. "The belt doesn’t talk back," she notes.

Her sister, now Anne Marie Bricker, is a nurse practitioner in Arizona. Ms. Bricker, recently divorced, moved this summer from Sedona to Phoenix, abandoning a private practice to work in a clinic. "I want to have more time for doing fun things for myself," she says.

The Warburton babies were certainly good candidates for the Pioneer Fund project. Their father, Ernest K. Warburton, was a young pilot who would soon be Brig. Gen. Warburton and the most famous test pilot of the era, flying more than 400 different allied and captured enemy aircraft. In 1945, he and the airmen under his command were the first U.S. troops to land in Japan after its surrender. Later, he commanded all air operations for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The Warburton family heard about the Pioneer offer after Anna Warburton realized she was carrying twins, her fourth and fifth children, Mrs. Warburton says today. "I remember him coming home all" excited about the scholarship, says Mrs. Warburton, now 86. "All we really knew was that it was . . . for the children’s education, and it was intended to propagate a superior group."

Ward and Darby grew up in the classic life of military children, moving often between Air Force bases in the U.S. and Europe. Both finished high school and signed up as military reservists, though they never saw active duty.

For more than 30 years, the brothers have kept refrigerators, air conditioners and washing machines running in this bucolic corner of Massachusetts, the family’s home territory. Darby works on commercial cooling units. Ward is a jack-of-all appliances repairman. Their other siblings — including two doctors — are scattered from Hawaii to North Carolina.

On a grassy hilltop just outside Ware, Ward lives in a comfortable gray frame house overlooking the small tree-lined lake on which his future wife was skating the first time he saw her. His mother-in-law’s home sits across the water from theirs. A collection of used washers and other appliances scavenged for spare parts protrudes from the woods behind the house.

Before venturing out a decade ago to start repairing appliances in his garage, Mr. Warburton was a fix-it man for Sears, Roebuck & Co. for 28 years. "I loved the job," he says.

Just down the highway lives Ward’s fast-graying twin, Darby, in a rambling white farmhouse. Out of a barn behind the home, Darby runs a two-man commercial air-conditioning service business, which he bought in 1962. He wants to retire next year. So in June, his 26-year-old son, Ernest, started working in the family business with plans to take over.

Ward is a member of Ware Lions Club. Darby is a Rotarian. Darby, who attended the University of Michigan but didn’t graduate, is financially the more successful brother. He keeps two vintage Corvettes as hobby cars, driving them to Rotary meetings every week and on other special occasions. Over a recent dinner at the Salem Cross Inn — where Darby maintains the walk-in cooler — the brothers banter about their decades of mostly friendly competition.

"I try to steal as many of Darby’s customers as I can," Ward says. "Darby gets mad when I do."

"I do not get mad," huffs Darby, partly serious.

Darby says he doesn’t recall ever knowing anything about the Pioneer Fund program before a reporter contacted the family recently, though his brother and mother insist that he was told. For his part, Ward clearly recalls the day more than 40 years ago that his father told him about the Pioneer Fund plan.

"I was the slow one in the family," says Mr. Warburton, recalling his days as an academically frustrated teenager. "Just kidding around one day . . . to cheer me up, he said, `Ward, come out of it, you’re the master race.’

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Arkansas Native Douglas Blackmon Wins Pulitzer

By Arkansas Business Staff

4/20/2009 4:45:01 PM

Douglas Blackmon of Monticello won a Pulitzer Prize Monday for general nonfiction.

Blackmon wrote "Slavery by Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II."

The book chronicles post Civil War practices that created a "neoslavery" in the Deep South, including parts of Arkansas.

Blackmon grew up in the Delta regions of Arkansas and Mississippi and attended Hendrix College in Conway, graduating in 1986. After graduation, he worked for the Arkansas Democrat and The Daily Record, both of Little Rock.

The Pulitzer Prize announcements took place Monday at Columbia University in New York.

Blackmon is the Atlanta Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal and has written extensively about race, the economy and American society.

In an interview with ArkansasBusiness.com on Monday, Blackmon said his time in Arkansas helped shape his understanding of race and career in journalism.

"I had the greatest journalism teacher in the world in high school," Blackmon said, referring to Carolyn Ripley of Monticello High School. "She was a spectacular teacher, and for a little place out in the middle of nowhere, I had a lot of great teachers."

Check Arkansas Business' Outtakes media column on Monday, April 27 for more on Blackmon.

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