Robert Garrett - "the Baltimore Eugenicist" finally discovered

[John Bevilaqua]

I think I have finally discovered the previously unnamed "Baltimore Eugenicist" who was associated with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad

alluded to by Richard Condon in The Manchurian Candidate. Garrett would have been very familiar with Robert "Railroad" Ryan, and

Thomas "Fortune" Ryan who were the forebears of Clendenin J. Ryan part of the Ulius Amoss, Harold B. Chait and Carleton Coon

related organizations from Baltimore and part of Gram Trade Intl and Boston Metals Processing Company of Baltimore along with

Morris B. Schapiro. One of the Ryans actually shipped industrial diamonds to Hitler before and during World War II from his Belgian

owned mines in South Africa. And Clendenin J. Ryan was involved with William F. Buckley, Jr., Charles Edison and and Doug Caddy

through his son, Clendenin J. Ryan, Jr. in the formation of Young Americans for Freedom. Clendenin J. Ryan reported to Admiral James

Forrestal during World War II, the first U.S. Secretary of Defense but it may have been called the Secretary of War in the beginning.

Forrestal, Coon, Ryan, Amoss, Garrett and Bonner Fellers were all involved with MK/ULTRA in one way or the other or they would not

have been included in Condon's Manchurian Candidate.

Robert Garrett's brother was John W. Garrett and my supposition is that the Draper and Pioneer Fund confidante Henry Garrett, from

Columbia University, is probably related to them in some form or fashion. Henry Garrett claimed to be related to the owners of Garrett's

Farm where John Wilkes Booth was hidden after he killed Lincoln.

Funding the Eugenics Movement

Last Updated: 05/27/2009 23:58

Eugenics Watch

When Francis Galton coined the word eugenics and set out to promote the idea, he launched a movement based on an ideology. Different people at different times have been attracted by different aspects of eugenics — and have often rejected some pieces. There is no neat package, no central headquarters, no guiding Fuhrer. Rather, eugenics is a collection of ideas and projects about improving the human race by social control of human reproduction.

The eugenics movement has spread around the world, and into all facets of social life. No one in the United States (or anywhere in the developed world) today needs to look far to find eugenics: if you have trouble finding it in the mirror, you might look in your high school textbooks, and even in papers that you wrote yourself. It is in our newspapers (and all media), in the fiction we enjoy (and in much nonfiction), in government, at the mall, in your best friend's head. It is a way of thinking about life that some very smart people have been pushing for a century, with little or no resistance in the last 50 years.

To ask, then, about the funding for the movement is to pose a huge and tangled question. Nonetheless, we will wade into the thicket, not planning to get a complete answer, but expecting to get some idea of the size of the eugenics movement, some sense of the magnitude of the challenge we face.

The Robber Barons

At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the United States changed dramatically, from a society based on agriculture to a society based on industry. The population did not shift from the farms to the cities right away, but the money and power shifted. Men no longer made huge fortunes based on tobacco or cotton plantations; instead, men made huge fortunes from steel, oil, railroads and banking. In 1934, Matthew Josephson stuck a label on the small handful of very aggressive and successful businessmen who amassed huge fortunes in that period, and the label stuck — the "robber barons." The eugenics movement was funded substantially by them (and other multimillionaires).

Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) made his fortune in railroads and then steel. In 1889, he wrote an essay about the life of a rich man, explaining his view that the successful should spend part of life acquiring wealth and then part of life distributing it wisely. And he tried to follow his own advice. Unfortunately, some of his money went to the eugenics movement.

The Carnegie Institution of Washington funded the Station for Experimental Evolution at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island, beginning in 1904. This beautiful little outpost of biological research and study hosted the Eugenics Record Office (funded with Harriman money), beginning in 1910. C. B. Davenport was the director of the Cold Spring Harbor lab, and also the director of the Eugenics Record Office. Throughout the century, a number of universities and think-tanks have welcomed and groomed eugenics theorists and leaders. Individuals moved among these institutions as if there were revolving doors between them. The Carnegie Institution of Washington was among these eugenics think-tanks. For example, Robert S. Woodward was president of the Institution from 1904 to 1920, and helped to plan the Second International Congress of Eugenics. Other eugenics activists who went through the Carnegie revolving door included Ellsworth Huntington, Michael Teitelbaum and Howard Newcombe.

In 1952, when the eugenics movement was reorganizing, the Carnegie Institution of Washington helped out. George W. Corner, representing the Carnegie Institution, argued that there was "a great and emergent need for which special weapons are required." The Institute helped to fund research on these "special weapons" — new birth control methods.

Edward Henry Harriman (1848-1909) made his fortune speculating on the stock market. In 1897, he took over the bankrupt Union Pacific Railroad, and then went on to build a railroad empire in the West. When he died, his wife inherited his money. The following year, she provided $500,000 to found the Eugenics Record Office. The Eugenics Record Office was involved in the forced sterilization campaigns and the anti-immigration laws.

In 1932, the Third International Eugenics Congress was held in New York, at the Museum of Natural History. (The First International Eugenics Congress had been in 1912 in London, and the Second was in New York.) Mrs. E. H. Harriman was among the sponsors, along with Mrs. H. B. DuPont and Dr. J. Harvey Kellogg, among others.

John Davison Rockefeller (1839-1937) made his fortune in the oil industry. He founded Standard Oil, which at one time controlled 95 percent of the oil refining business in the country. He and his descendants gave away hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Rockefellers funded the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Germany, when eugenicists were preparing the way ideologically for what eventually became the world's most infamous slaughter, the Nazi holocaust. The Rockefeller Institute supported Alexis Carrel, who advocated the use of gas to get rid of the unwanted. John D. Rockefeller III founded the Population Council. Rockefeller money made Alfred Kinsey's sex research possible.

In the fall of 1993, the Rockefeller Archive Center Newsletter published "The Rockefeller Foundation, the Population Council and the Groundwork for New Population Policies" by John B. Sharpless of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Sharpless had been studying the files of the Rockefeller Foundation (RF), the records of the Population Council, and the personal papers of John D. Rockefeller III. He concluded that "Foundations and individual philanthropists are important in understanding the impressively quick and nearly unanimous change in attitudes and ideas about population that occurred during the 1960s." Such foundations funded the development of contraceptives, but also built the international network of experts who shaped the public debate, who shared "a core body of knowledge and a common mode of discourse" as well as a "shared set of assumptions about how population dynamics worked."

Sharpless wrote, "The power to accomplish this task was based on their relationship with the philanthropic community. In addition to the Rockefeller Foundation and the Population Council, other Foundations active in this area included the Ford Foundation, the Milbank Memorial Fund and, to a lesser extent, the Carnegie Corporation, and the Conservation Foundation."

Henry Ford (1863-1947) was a pioneer in the use of assembly lines, and mass-produced the first inexpensive automobile, the Model T. He and his son Edsel (1893-1943) established the Ford Foundation in 1936. For many years, this was the largest foundation in the world, giving away billions of dollars.

For many years, the Ford Foundation supported population control. In the 1970s, Michael Teitelbaum worked quietly on Capitol Hill to shape American population policy (without any public debate or scrutiny); he was supported for part of his career by the Ford Foundation. The foundation's impact on population policy is described at length in John Caldwell's 1986 book, Limiting Population Growth and the Ford Foundation.

John Harvey Kellogg, M.D. (1852-1945) figured out new ways to get Americans to eat the abundant grain of the Midwest. His best known product was corn flakes, a staple on American breakfast tables for generations.

Kellogg was on the Advisory Council of the American Eugenics Society from the early days. He founded the Race Betterment Foundation, and was a sponsor of three eugenics conferences.

Clarence J. Gamble used part of the fortune made by Procter & Gamble products (including soap) to finance birth control projects for the poor in many parts of the world. He helped to push through legislation in 1937 legalizing birth control in Puerto Rico; the law specified that birth control material was to be distributed by trained eugenicists. He supported birth control distribution in Appalachia and in rural Japan. A leader in Margaret Sanger's Birth Control Federation, he suggested that they set up a "Negro Project," using black clergy and physicians to promote birth control. He founded the Pathfinder Fund, to promote population control around the world.

In 1930 in New York, many of the wealthiest people in the world were members of the American Eugenics Society. They did not all provide funds for major eugenics initiatives, but their support certainly opened doors. It does not hurt an organization financially if its membership includes:

* J. P. Morgan, Jr., chairman, U. S. Steel, who handled British contracts in the United States for food and munitions during World War I;

* Mrs. Mary Duke Biddle, tobacco fortune heiress;

* Cleveland H. and Cleveland E. Dodge and their wives, who used some of the huge fortune that Phelps Dodge & Company made on copper mines and other metals to support eugenics;

* Robert Garrett, whose family had amassed a fortune through banking in Maryland and the B&O railroad, who helped finance two international eugenics congresses;

* Miss E. B. Scripps, whose wealth came from United Press (later UPI);

* Dorothy H. Brush, Planned Parenthood activist, whose wealth came from Charles Francis Brush (1849-1929), who invented the arc lamp for street lights and founded the Brush Electric Company;

* Margaret Sanger, who used the wealth of one of one of her husbands, Noah Slee, to promote her work. Slee made his fortune from the familiar household product, 3-in-One Oil.

Wealth Opens Doors to Wealth

Rich people generally don't get rich by being dumb. The people who funded the eugenics movement were smart enough to use their power and influence to develop additional sources of funding for their projects. Two huge sources of additional funds for eugenics are tax dollars and corporate donations.

Today, a large part of the eugenics movement is involved in population control, a form of negative eugenics. The funds that international bodies and national governments spend on population control stagger the imagination. A few examples follow.

From its beginning, the United Nations was a major battleground for population control. The Vatican and many Catholic countries resisted population control there, as did many Muslim nations. Still, the flow of funds from the United Nations for eugenics purposes has grown steadily.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) puts out an Inventory of Population Projects every year, which gives a quick view of programs and their financial support around the world. The inventory shows "multilateral" support from international bodies, "bilateral" support from one nation to another, and support from "non-governmental organizations," or NGOs.

To take one random example: in Egypt in 1988-89, there was support from three multilateral organizations. The World Bank had supported two projects over a period of years, with a cost of over $45 million (costs split with the Egyptian government). UNFPA had provided support for eleven projects, expending over $30 million. The World Health Organization (WHO) had provided approximately $2.5 million over the previous 17 years.

Egypt received bilateral agency assistance from three nations. The United States provided $25 million over a two-year period. Germany and Japan provided much smaller sums.

There were 17 NGOs providing funds for population assistance in Egypt that year. The NGOs are much more flexible than national governments; they can get funds approved faster than donor nations, and can work around laws in recipient nations. One clear example is the Pathfinder Fund in the United States, which provided funds for abortion equipment when the American government refused to do so, and provided the equipment in a nation where abortion was illegal (by saying that the suction devices were for "menstrual regulation). NGOs active in Egypt that year included:

* Association for Voluntary Surgical Sterilization (formerly the Human Betterment Foundation, founded by E. S. Gosney, a member of Advisory Council of the American Eugenics Society), which provided about $125,000 for six sterilization projects;

* Family Planning International Assistance, which reported "a cumulative total of $2,952,940 in family planning commodities [that is, condoms, Pills, IUDs, etc.] to 27 institutions in Egypt";

* International Planned Parenthood Federation, which spent $588,500 in Egypt that year;

* John Snow, Inc, which was spending $4.5 million over seven years to save children from diarrhea, plus another $532,000 in one year to strengthen family planning programs;

* Pathfinder Fund, which was spending $300,226 over two years helping to build or improve 258 family planning clinics;

* Population Council, which reported four projects in Egypt that year, including one on Norplant and two on IUDs, at a cost of $59,000;

* Rockefeller Foundation, which was spending $55,000 on two projects over several years to study Norplant and Pill usage.

In Kenya, to take another example, the same multilateral agencies provided population control funds that year (World Bank, UNFPA and WHO). Bilateral support came from the United States, Sweden, Norway, Britain, Finland, Germany and Canada. There were 22 NGOs funding population control in Kenya that year, including all the groups mentioned above.

In the years since the report used in these example, population funding has increased substantially, from all sources.

The major international population control funders are the World Bank and UNFPA. The leader among the national governments that have made a serious commitment to population control has been the United States, but Japan has been catching up. The Scandinavian nations have made the largest per capita contributions. The British and the Canadians are also large donors to population control.

Corporate Support

Each year, corporations in the United States make a long list of charitable donations. These donations are a way that the companies can share their wealth with the community, but they also get good public relations. When people watch a television program funded by an oil company, they don't automatically switch their gas purchases, but the company gets name recognition and good feelings that can generate more sales over time.

As a result, it is often possible to persuade companies that make controversial donations to stop it. So it would be a mistake to put out a list of companies that fund eugenics today; they may stop tomorrow, and the list would change. However, there are hundreds of companies on the list.

Drug companies that manufacture oral contraceptives and other birth control material are not likely to change their ways quickly. American corporations that make birth control Pills include American Home Products, Johnson & Johnson, Bristol Myers Squibb, Monsanto, Alza, Warner Lambert and Pharmacia-Upjohn. The products — both good and bad — of these huge companies are in every household in America. In fact, virtually every household in the nation buys their products every time they go shopping.

The drug companies have provided funds and lobbyists in Washington for eugenics-related work. But today, they are joined by biotechnology companies. The fastest growing companies in the nation are computer firms and biotechnology firms.

Dark Clouds on the Horizon

There may be huge sums of new money coming to the eugenics movement in the beginning of the 21st century. Three of the richest men in the world have indicated that they intend to use their wealth to improve the quality of life (for some).

Ted Turner became a billionaire by developing a television network, CNN. He is giving one billion dollars to the United Nations, doled out over ten years by his own foundation, and is steering a large portion of it to population control.

Warren Buffett has discussed plans for a foundation to distribute his money after he dies. The foundation is to focus on two issues: world peace and population control. His fortune in early 1999 was reported to be over $30 billion and growing steadily.

Other billionaires have begun funding parts of the eugenics movement. Bill Gates, the richest man in the country, and George Soros, the financier, have started putting their money into population control projects.

The struggle over eugenics is a battle for minds and hearts, and can be won by telling the truth with courage and love. But it is prudent to assess the strengths of our opposition. They do have money and power.

In 1930 in New York, many of the wealthiest people in the world were members of the American Eugenics Society. They did not all provide funds for major eugenics initiatives, but their support certainly opened doors. It does not hurt an organization financially if its membership includes:

* J. P. Morgan, Jr., chairman, U. S. Steel, who handled British contracts in the United States for food and munitions during World War I;

* Mrs. Mary Duke Biddle, tobacco fortune heiress;

* Cleveland H. and Cleveland E. Dodge and their wives, who used some of the huge fortune that Phelps Dodge & Company made on copper mines and other metals to support eugenics;

* Robert Garrett, whose family had amassed a fortune through banking in Maryland and the B&O railroad, who helped finance two international eugenics congresses;

* Miss E. B. Scripps, whose wealth came from United Press (later UPI);

* Dorothy H. Brush, Planned Parenthood activist, whose wealth came from Charles Francis Brush (1849-1929), who invented the arc lamp for street lights and founded the Brush Electric Company;

* Margaret Sanger, who used the wealth of one of one of her husbands, Noah Slee, to promote her work. Slee made his fortune from the familiar household product, 3-in-One Oil.

John Work Garrett (1872-1942) — also known as John W. Garrett — of Baltimore County, Md.; Baltimore, Md. Born in Baltimore, Md., May 19, 1872. Son of Thomas Harrison Garrett and Alice Dickinson (Whitridge) Garrett; married, December 24, 1908, to Alice Warder; brother of Robert Garrett. Republican. Banker; Foreign Service officer; U.S. Minister to Venezuela, 1910-11; Argentina, 1911-13; Netherlands, 1917-19; Luxembourg, 1917-19; delegate to Republican National Convention from Maryland, 1920, 1924; U.S. Ambassador to Italy, 1929-33. Died in 1942. Burial location unknown.

Robert Garrett (b. 1875) — of Roland Park, Baltimore, Md. Born in Baltimore County, Md., June 24, 1875. Son of Thomas Harrison Garrett and Alice Dickinson (Whitridge) Garrett; brother of John Work Garrett; married, May 1, 1907, to Katharine Barker Johnson. Republican. Banker; candidate for Maryland state house of delegates, 1903, 1905; candidate for U.S. Representative from Maryland 2nd District, 1904, 1906, 1908; member of Maryland Republican State Central Committee, 1912. Presbyterian. Member, American Historical Association; American Academy of Political and Social Science; Alpha Delta Phi. Burial location unknown.

Robert Garrett seems to have been the much more extreme right-wing Eugenicist while his brother John Work Garrett was much more philanthropic and liberal than his brother.

John W. Garrett

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

For other persons named John W. Garrett, see John W. Garrett (disambiguation).

John W. Garrett

Born July 31, 1820(1820-07-31)

Baltimore, Maryland

Died September 26, 1884

Deer Park, Maryland

John Work Garrett (July 31, 1820 – September 26, 1884) was an American banker, philanthropist, and president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O).

In 1855, he was named to the board of the B&O, and in 1858, became its president, a position he held until the year he died. His tenure was marked by his support for the Union cause during the Civil War, the expansion of the railroad to reach Chicago, Illinois, and his struggles with the Pennsylvania Railroad over access to New York City. Many places are named in his honor, including:

* Garrett, Indiana

* Garrett County, Maryland

* Garrett Park, Maryland

* Garrett, Pennsylvania

Contents

[hide]

* 1 Early life

* 2 The Civil War

* 3 Postbellum activities

* 4 References

* 5 External links

[edit] Early life

After attending but not graduating from Lafayette College,[1] Garrett began working as a clerk in his father's banking and financial services firm, Robert Garrett and Company, at the age of nineteen. The company's fleet of Conestoga wagons carried food and supplies west over the Cumberland Trail. In later years, the business expanded into railroads, shipping, and banking.

Garrett began purchasing the stock of B&O during a difficult period when the railroad was contending with the completion of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and internal conflicts created by its part private and public ownership. Of the thirty members of the B&O's board of directors, eighteen were selected by Maryland and the City of Baltimore.[2] On November 17, 1858, following a motion of board member and shareholder Johns Hopkins, Garrett became president of the B&O Railroad. The Garrett Company and the B&O interests had strong ties to the London-based George Peabody & Company, and through their business interests, Garrett and George Peabody became close friends. Garrett became deeply involved with the Peabody Institute.

Garrett married Rachel Ann Harrisson (1823–1883) and had four children. His daughter Mary E. Garrett, a philanthropist and suffragist, helped found the Bryn Mawr School and secured the admission of women to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Among the Baltimore residences of the Garretts was Evergreen House, which was later donated by a descendant to the Johns Hopkins University.

[edit] The Civil War

The B&O got an early taste of the Civil War during John Brown's raid on the Federal armory in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia (in those days still part of Virginia). Garrett learned that raiders had stopped a train at Harper's Ferry, and sent a telegraph to the Secretary of War.[2] Federal troops led by Robert E. Lee were sent to put down the rebellion on a B&O train. Garrett considered the B&O to be a Southern railroad, and had pro-South sympathies. However, his business sense (and his anger at seeing Confederates tearing up his railroad) made him side for the Union[5], and under his direction, the B&O was instrumental in supporting the Federal government, as it was the main rail connection between Washington, DC and the northern states.

Garrett is particularly remembered for his part in the Battle of Monocacy. Agents of the railroad began reporting Confederate troop movements eleven days prior to the battle, and Garrett had their intelligence passed to authorities in the War Department and to Major General Lew Wallace, who commanded the department that would be responsible for defense of the area. As preparations for the battle progressed, Garrett provided transport for federal troops and munitions, and on two occasions was contacted directly by President Abraham Lincoln for further information. Though Union forces lost this battle, the delay allowed Ulysses S. Grant to successfully repel the confederate attack on Washington at the Battle of Fort Stevens two days later, and after the battle, Lincoln paid tribute to Garrett as "The right arm of the Federal Government in the aid he rendered the authorities in preventing the Confederates from seizing Washington and securing its retention as the Capital of the Loyal States."[3]

Garrett was a confidant of President Lincoln, and often often occompanied on his visits to battlefields in Maryland.[1] In 1865 Garrett organized the funeral train that took the body of the assassinated president from Washington to Springfield, Illinois, a trip which included stops and processions in Baltimore, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, New York City, Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, and Chicago.[4]

[edit] Postbellum activities

After the war, Garrett acquired three gunboats that had been used in the blockade service and refitted them into packet ships, establishing the first regular line service from Baltimore, Maryland, to Liverpool, Pennsylvania. He was also associated with several telegraph companies.[1]

Following the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, Garrett in 1880 was one of the organizers of the B&O Employees' Relief Association.[1] The B&O provided its initial endowment and assumed all administrative costs. Worker coverage included sickness, indefinite time for recovery from accidents, and a death benefit.[2] In 1884 Garrett was instrumental in negotiating the loans which allowed the B&O to extend its main line to Philadelphia and through the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad to reach New York City.

Garrett, a trustee of the Peabody Institute, asked its founder, George Peabody, to persuade Johns Hopkins to make the bequest that would make possible the Johns Hopkins University and Medical Institutions. Garrett became one of the most active trustees of the university.

[edit] References

1. ^ a b c d Hall, Clayton Colman (1912). Baltimore: Its History and Its People. 2. Lewis Historical Publishing Co.. pp. 458–461.

2. ^ a b c Fee, Elizabeth (1991). "Evergreen House and the Garrett Family: A Railroad Fortune". in Fee, Elizabeth; Shopes, Linda; and Zeidman, Linda (eds.). The Baltimore Book: New Views of Local History. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. pp. 11–27. ISBN 0-87722-823-X.

3. ^ John W. Garrett, President, B & O Railroad from the US National Park Service Monocacy National Battlefield website (accessed 14 November 2006)

4. ^ Scharf, J. Thomas (1967 (reissue of 1879 ed.)), History of Maryland From the Earliest Period to the Present Day, 3, Hatboro, PA: Tradition Press, pp. 656, http://books.google.com/books?id=9IEjAAAAM...istory+maryland

* Bowditch, Eden Unger (2001). Growing Up in Baltimore: A Photographic History. Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 0-7385-1357-1. OCLC 48216339.

* "About Us". Garrett State Bank. http://www.garrettstatebank.com/about.htm. Retrieved 2005-03-02.

* Ingham, John N. (1983). Biographical Dictionary of American business leaders. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-23907-X. OCLC 8388468.

* "Biography of John Work Garrett". Encyclopedia of World Biography. Thomson Gale. 2005. http://www.bookrags.com/biography/john-work-garrett/. Retrieved 2005-03-02.

* Treese, Lorett (2003). Railroads of Pennsylvania: Fragments of the Past in the Keystone Landscape. Mechanicsburg, Penn.: Stackpole Books. ISBN 0-8117-2622-3. OCLC 50228411.

* White, John H, Jr. (Spring 1986). "America's Most Noteworthy Railroaders". Railroad History (154): p. 9–15. OCLC 1785797. ISSN 0090-7847.

5. Summers, Festus "The B&O in the Civil War"

[John Bevilaqua]

More on Robert Garrett - the first Modern Olympic Champion in the Discus in 1896 and one of Wickliffe Draper's favorite Eugenicist's

Robert Garrett

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

For other persons named Robert Garrett, see Robert Garrett (disambiguation).

Medal record

Robert Garrett

Men's athletics

Competitor for the United States

Olympic Games

Gold 1896 Athens Shot put

Gold 1896 Athens Discus throw

Silver 1896 Athens High jump

Silver 1896 Athens Long jump

Bronze 1900 Paris Shot put

Bronze 1900 Paris Standing triple jump

Robert S. Garrett (May 24, 1875 – April 25, 1961) was an American athlete. He was the first modern Olympic champion in discus throw and shot put.

Contents

[hide]

* 1 Biography

* 2 1896 Olympics

* 3 1900 Olympics

* 4 Life after Olympics

* 5 External links

* 6 References

[edit] Biography

Born in Baltimore County, Maryland, Garrett came from a wealthy family and studied in Princeton University. He excelled in track and field athletics as an undergraduate, and was captain of the Princeton track team in both his junior and senior years. Garrett was primarily a shot-putter, though he also competed in the jumping events. When he decided to compete in the first modern Olympics in 1896, Professor William Milligan Sloane suggested he should also try the discus.

They consulted classical authorities to develop a drawing and Garrett hired a blacksmith to make a discus. It weighed nearly 30 pounds (14 kg) and it was impossible to throw any distance, so he gave up on the idea. Garrett paid for his own and three classmates' (Francis Lane third in 100 m, Herbert Jamison second in 400 m, and Albert Tyler second in pole vault) way to Athens to compete in the Olympics. When he discovered that a real discus weighs less than five pounds, he decided to enter the event for fun.

[edit] 1896 Olympics

The Greek discus throwers were true stylists. Each throw, as they spun and rose from a classical Discobolus stance, was more beautiful than the last. Not so with Garrett, who seized the discus in his right hand and swinging himself around and around, the way the 16 pound hammer is usually thrown, threw the discus with tremendous force. Garrett's first two throws were embarrassingly clumsy. Instead of sailing parallel to the ground, the discus turned over and over and narrowly missed hitting some of the audience. Both foreigners and Americans laughed at his efforts and he joined in the general merriment. His final throw, however, punctuated with a loud grunt, sent the discus sailing 19 centimeters beyond the best Greek competitor's Panagiotis Paraskevopoulos's mark to 29.15 metres.

American spectator Burton Holmes wrote: "All were stupefied. The Greeks had been defeated at their own classic exercise. They were overwhelmed by the superior skill and daring of the Americans, to whom they ascribed a supernatural invincibility enabling them to dispense with training and to win at games which they had never before seen." The performances were remarkable. According to James Connolly, in five of the track and field events won by Americans, they had not had a single day of outdoor practice since the previous fall.

Garrett also won the shot put with a distance of 11.22 metres and finished second in the high jump (tied equally with James Connolly at 1.65 metres) and second in the long jump (with a jump of 6.00 metres).

[edit] 1900 Olympics

In the 1900 Olympics, Garrett placed third in the shot put and the standing triple jump. His bronze medal in the shot put was especially impressive, as he refused to compete in the final due to it being held on a Sunday. His qualifying mark was good enough to place him in third. He also competed in the discus throw again, but due to a poorly planned course was unable to set a legal mark as his discus throws all hit trees.

Garrett was the IC4A shot put champion in 1897.

In addition, Garrett was a member of the Tug-of-War team at the 1900 Olympics that was unable to take part because three of its six members were engaged in the hammer throw.

[edit] Life after Olympics

Later he became a banker and donator to science, especially to history and archeology. He helped to organize and finance an archaeological expedition to Syria, led by Dr. John M. T. Finney. From 1932 to 1939, he was involved with the Committee for the Excavation of Antioch and Its Vicinity both helping to fund the excavations and working on them. His hobby was collecting Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts. In 1942 Garrett donated to Princeton University his collection of more than 11,000 manuscripts, including sixteen Byzantine Greek manuscripts, containing rare and beautiful examples of illuminated Byzantine art for the use of scholars. He was for many years a trustee of Princeton University and The Baltimore Museum of Art.

Garrett had amassed this collection of historical volumes of Western and non-Western manuscripts, fragments, and scrolls, originating from Europe, the Near East, Africa, Asia and Mesoamerica, ca. 1340 B.C.-1900s.

Garrett inherited his collecting interest from his father, Thomas Harrison Garrett, Princeton Class of 1868. After his father's sudden death in 1888, Garrett spent the following two and a half years traveling extensively with his mother and two brothers, Horatio and John, in Europe and the Near East. During his travels Garrett developed a particular interest in manuscripts and began collecting. He used the text Universal Paleography: or, Facsimiles of Writing of All Nations and Periods by J. B. Silvestre (by Sir Frederic Madden, London, 1949-50) as his guide for collecting primary examples of every known type of script.

Robert Garrett was one of the primary financial sponsors of the American Eugenics Society the personal project of Wickliffe P. Draper who sponsored most of the research behind "The Bell Curve" published in 1994. Garrett also served on the Finance Committee of the International Congress of The American Eugenics Society along with Madison Grant author of "The Passing of the Great Race."

In 1930 in New York, many of the wealthiest people in the world were members of the American Eugenics Society.

It earliest members and sponsors included:

J. P. Morgan, Jr., chairman, U. S. Steel, who handled British contracts in the United States for food and munitions during World War I

Mrs. Mary Duke Biddle, tobacco fortune heiress whose family founded Duke University

Cleveland H. and Cleveland E. Dodge and their wives, who used some of the huge fortune that Phelps Dodge & Company made on copper mines and other metals to support eugenics

Robert Garrett, whose family had amassed a fortune through banking in Maryland and the B&O railroad, who helped finance two international eugenics congresses

Miss E. B. Scripps, whose wealth came the Scrips-Howard newspaper chain and from United Press (later UPI)

Dorothy H. Brush, Planned Parenthood activist, whose wealth came from Charles Francis Brush (1849-1929), who invented the arc lamp for street lights and founded the Brush Electric Company

Margaret Sanger, who used the wealth of one of one of her husbands, Noah Slee, to promote her work. Slee made his fortune from the familiar household product, 3-in-One Oil.

The other Finance Committee members included: Leon F. Whitney the great-grandson of Eli Whitney inventor of the Cotton Gin who was the Chairman; Frank L. Babbott the well-known philanthropist and educator, Madison Grant later of The Pioneer Fund, founded by Wickliffe Draper following the 1936 Olympics when his nephew, Floyd Draper, was edged out for Olympic glory by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalf, Mrs. Helen Hartley Jenkins, a philanthropist from the Phelps-Dodge, Remington Arms and DuPont Chemical families, and John H. Kellogg who owned the Kellogg's Cereal Company. Garrett's associates on the Finance Committee later promoted some very controversial population control schemes. Leon Whitney proposed sterilizing 10,000,000 "hereditary defectives" against their will (almost 10% of the entire population of the USA at the time) which was also supported by Wickliffe Draper and Madison Grant, known as "America's most influential racist". Grant continuously proposed segregation of undesirable minority populations in "ghettos" encircled by barbed wire fences and armed guards. He also helped to pass several Anti-Miscegnation Laws in Virginia and elsewhere. John Kellogg later supported some of the more extreme measures of Birth Control including total abstinence, discouragement of onanism, and even sexual mutilation. Kellogg was also very outspoken on his beliefs about segregation. In 1906, Kellogg founded The Race Betterment Foundation along with Charles Davenport, which became a major center of influence for the new Eugenics movement in America. Kellogg was in favor of complete racial segregation and firmly believed that both immigrants, especially non-whites would severely damage the gene pool and lead to the diminuition of the domination of the white Anglo-Saxons in America.

And Robert Garrett once proposed limiting the growth of the US population in direct proportion to the growth of the Money Supply ostensibly in order to assure adequate employment opportunities at a fair, living wage standard. Many of their "Progressive" proposals were actually put into practice later primarily through the efforts of Wickliffe Draper and his Pioneer Fund which lobbied successfully to pass Involuntary Sterilization Laws in almost 20 States which resulted in over 75,000 sterilizations being performed between 1924 and 1972 when the last of these laws were overturned. See: "Against Their Will" by Kevin Begos in the Winston-Salem Journal. Draper and his cohorts also supported various Anti-Immigration Laws including The Johnson Act of 1924.

As the supremacy of white athletes at the Olympics and elsewhere began to gradually fade away, the efforts of the American Eugenics Society were increased in order to attempt to retain that advantage. Draper and Prof. Henry Garrett of The Pioneer Fund, Robert's grand-nephew fought both Brown vs. Board of Education (School Desegregation) and The Civil Rights Act of 1964 using their memberships in The American Eugenics Society, The Pioneer Fund and The International Association for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics, but to no avail.

When you consider the common goals and aspirations of everyone closely associated with Robert Garrett on that Finance Committee, one can only conclude that the reason Garrett personally financed these International Eugenics Conferences was an attempt to convert their Eugenics based social policies into legislative mandates enforceable as Federal or State laws. And for a while they partially succeeded in that lofty though thoroughly despicable set of goals.

Robert Garrett died on April 25, 1961, in Baltimore, Maryland.

[edit] External links

* The Unexpected Olympians - How Harvard Dominated the First Modern Games - In Spite of Himself By Jonathan Shaw. An article in Harvard Magazine

* Amusing Then Amazing--American Wins Discus in 1896. An article by Thomas Curtis

[David Andrews]

Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund for eugenics, mentioned in the John Bevilaqua post:

https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKdraperW.htm