E-LIST #34
American Eugenics & Immigration Policy: Archive of Books, Letters, and Ephemera from the Library of C.M. Goethe

A chilling, unique archive of 39 books, over 140 letters, and hundreds of newspaper clippings and pieces of ephemera from the private library of outspoken eugenics advocate Charles Matthias Goethe (March 28, 1875 – July 10, 1966). A wealthy businessman and philanthropist, he was also the  founder of Sacramento State College, now known as California State University, Sacramento.

The hardcover books are nearly all on the subject of eugenics. They house the archive. All letters, newspaper clippings, and ephemera were carefully pasted into the books' margins and blank pages, often folded with their edges trimmed by Mr. Goethe. Sometimes he jotted notes in the margins of the pasted-on articles and letters, and in the books themselves in ink, pencil, and crayon. Only occasionally would the pieces of correspondence and newspaper clippings directly relate to the book they were pasted onto. Generally they were related to eugenics, crime, race-mixing, and the Cold War.

There is an almost artistic fluidity to the various incidents and figures that are juxtaposed, spanning across the country from the 1920s to the mid-1960s, connecting America's experiment in eugenics and immigration control before WWII to the early Cold War, where an international network of eugenics advocates attempted to carry on their work despite their advanced age and the world's gradual reckoning of the horror of the Holocaust they had partly inspired. In this archive a loose diagram of the figures involved in America's manifestly racist immigration policies, its scientific establishment, and its political far Right in the first six decades of the 20th century is revealed.

Among the notables whose signed letters grace this collection are leading lights of American eugenics: Madison Grant, Lothrop Stoddard, Paul Popenoe, Samuel J. Holmes, Sheldon Reed, and Leon Whitney. Also included are Irving Fisher (known today for his work on economics and Wall Street), Nazi race theorist Hans F.K. Gunther, Nobel laureate scientist George Beadle, cartoonist Ding Darling, and longtime Saturday Evening Post editor George Horace Lorimer. Multiple politicians, often sitting on important federal committees deciding issues of immigration, also have signed letters in this archive: senators Pat McCarran and Thomas A. Jenkins, house reps Albert Johnson, H. Allen Smith, Harry Hull, and John C. Box, and Vice-President Charles Curtis. In these letters readers can see official U.S immigration policy being directly influenced by Goethe, an avowed racist with an especially vitriolic hatred of Mexicans. His prejudices were translated into policy.

Perhaps of historical significance is a single holograph annotation by Goethe that suggests that the early journalism of writer Kenneth Roberts (best-known for his novel Northwest Passage) reputedly reporting from the U.S./Mexico border, was not only co-written by himself but composed in Los Angeles, making it a fabrication.

Goethe's official archive was donated to California State University, Sacramento upon his passing in 1966. This smaller archive-- a paranoid pastiche of literature, letters, and newspaper stories-- is more than a supplement that one, it's a dark little world unto itself.

WITH ALS FROM S.J. HOLMES

* Davis, James J. Selective Immigration. St. Paul: Scott-Mitchell Publishing Company, 1925. 227 pp. Original green ribbed cloth with gilt lettering, sans jacket. First edition. Typical marginal crayon notations by Goethe and articles pasted to terminals.

ALS from eugenicist and zoologist Samuel J. Holmes on University of California, Dept. of Zoology letterhead, to C.M. Goethe, affixed to verso of ffep, dated May 19, '27. Related unsigned 2 pp. note, apparently also written by Holmes, of figures on note folded and affixed to facing half-title.

Folded and affixed to the verso of that page is typed“The Minutes of the Section on Immigration, Thursday, May 5^th, 1927.” from the Commonwealth of California.

Underneath that is a single page TLS from A.W. Stockwell at The Office of the Commissioner, U.S. Department of Labor, Immigration, on official letterhead, dated May 21 1927. He asks Goethe "What is the attitude of your Commission regarding the inclusion of the Chinese and Japanese in the quota system? What is the feeling on the Pacific coast?" Stockwell then mentions that some favor limiting immigration in general without bias against Asia.

TLS dated April 21, 1927 from Leland B. Morris, Consul in Charge of the Athens, Greece American consulate on American Consulate Service letterhead. 2 pp. Mounted on rear endpaper.

TLS from Albert Johnson, U.S. Representative from Washington's third congressional district from 1915 to 1933, to Goethe on official letterhead mounted on rear paste down. Dated February 2, 1926, it reads:

Much pleased to receive your recent letter and to learn that your health is permitting you to resume work in your office. I have seen printed in some of the newspapers some immigration stories under foreign date lines, which I now recognize as coming from your office. I am pleased with the information which you are putting forward.

This Committee is very busy and is holding hearings frequently on various phases of the immigration question. As soon as printed copies of these hearings will be sent to you. You will be particularly interested in the hearing in re relatives at which State Department officials testified and gave statistics as available.

Johnson was largely responsible for the Immigration Act of 1924, and headed The Eugenics Research Association. He was an outspoken antisemite and racist who advocated sterilization of the mentally challenged.

RARE BOOK WITH PROGRAM FROM 1927
EUGENICS RESEARCH ASSOCIATION MEETING

* Fairchild, Henry Pratt. The Melting-Pot Mistake. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1926. vi, [2], 266 pp. Original blue cloth with orange stamping, sans jacket. First edition. Typical notes and pasted-in articles, else Very Good+. Small sections of the dust jacket of this book cut and folded, pasted onto endpapers. Rare; no copies currently for sale. Fairchild was a sociologist associated with Planned Parenthood.

TLS from S. Leigh Call, Editor of Illinois State Journal dated March 28, 1957 mounted on paste down. Similar TLS from the editor of The Standard of New Bedford, Massachusetts affixed below that, dated March 6, 1927. TLS from the editor of journal The Railway Conductor dated April 30, 1927 mounted to facing page, as is TLS from John Barry, Editor/Manager of the journal of International Brotherhood of Boiler Makers and Iron Ship Builders and Helpers of America, Kansas City, Kansas, on their elaborate 19th century-style letterhead, dated April 30, 1927. TLS from Goethe at the Immigration Study Commission on their letterhead to the editor of the Union Leader newspaper of Chicago, dated April 26, 1927, affixed to rear endpaper.

CC of a two page letter from Goethe (President of the Immigration Study Commission) to Professor John Gillen at University of Wisconsin, dated March 14,1927, mounted on rear paste down. Goethe outlines his extremely negative views of Mexicans as a race of "peons"-- his vitriol for them in particular is in evidence here. He appeals to Gillen as a fellow member of the American Sociological Society to support the Box Bill.

Double-sided program of The Eugenics Research Association 15th Annual Meeting at Cold Spring Harbor in 1927 folded and pasted onto rear paste down.

INCLUDES SCARCE PAMPHLET URGING PARENTS
TO STERILIZE THEIR DIFFERENTLY-ABLED CHILDREN

*Goddard, Henry Herbert, Ph. D. The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1913. xv, [1], 121, [8, ads] pp. Original dark green cloth lettered in gilt., sans jacket. First edition, second printing. Portrait facing title page detached and laid in, typical notes in margins and pasted-on newspaper clippings. Uncommon influential eugenics book showing racial degeneration.

Scarce small staple-bound 24 pp. pamphlet titled ... for Parents of Retarded Children pasted on detached page mentioned above, some horizontal tears to pages, masking tape repairs. About Good. A publication of Human Betterment Association, Inc. it urges parents to have their mentally-challenged children sterilized. Hand-dated 6/1-53 by Goethe on front wrap. No copies located in the currently, a single institutional copy found in OCLC Worldcat.

TLS from Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Albert Johnson dated March 22, 1952 mounted on ffep. He writes to Goethe:

I greatly appreciate the work that you are doing. Our revised restriction immigration bill now No. 7995, is just being reported and will be up for consideration in the Hose the week of March 31.

If anything should happen that the Senate adopts a different measure and sends the two measures into conference under a plan that will admit revision, I am decided that if I have to give way to the Senate on any details I shall insist on incorporporation [sic] in a compromise measure of a bill for the deportation of convicted alien liquor and narcotic law violators. This bill is the next one to be reported by the House Committee, and if we could hook it up on to the restriction measure we would be making great progress.

This letter shows how intricately Goethe was connected to the federal legislation that was happening at the time, as well as a revealing look at the way in which alcohol and drugs were bundled into legislating nativism.

CC'd letter from Goethe to U.S President Calvin Coolidge [name misspelled "Cooledge"] mounted on terminal blank, dated 5-26-24. It summarizes Goethe's eugenics views and work and congratulates the President on his recent election.

TLS from Thomas Sterling, Chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Civil Service, to Goethe dated July 5, 1921, mounted on rear endpaper. Sterling writes, "Aside from the Roman Catholics of the country, nearly everybody seems to be in favor of the Towner-Sterling bill, creating a Department of Education." Sterling is optimistic about the bill's likelihood of passing.

* Goethe, C.M. Seeking to Serve. [Sacramento]: Self-published, 1949. XII, 212 pp. Original cloth. Near Fine with no writing or articles, paste-in, etc.

* Goethe, C.M. The Elfin Forest: A Glimpse of California's Chaparral. [Sacramento]: Self-published, 1953. VII, 89 pp. Original cloth. Very Good+ with slightly shaken spine, overopened, text free of markings.

* Goethe, C.M. “What's in a Name?” [Sacramento]: Self-published, 1949. XXII, 202 pp. Original cloth. Very Good with writing on spine by author, two small clippings pasted on pp. 136-137, otherwise unmarked. One of Goethe's copies of his own work, an illustrated historical work describing how California places got their names.

SIGNED LETTER FROM 1958 NOBEL
LAUREATE GEORGE BEADLE

* Gosney, E.S.; Popenoe, Paul. Sterilization for Human Betterment: A Summary of Results of 6,000 Operations in California, 1909-1929. xviii, 202 pp. Original crimson ribbed cloth with gilt spine lettering. First edition. A Near Fine copy besides Goethe's additions, lacking jacket. Inscribed "To C.M. Goethe with the compliments of the The Authors" in ink on front free endpaper. Typical clippings, notes and letters mounted by Goethe; text itself free of marks and notes. Rare in the trade as a first edition, reprinted a number of times.

Mounted on page facing title page is CC'd letter from Goethe to Ruth Proskauer Smith, Director Human Betterment Association of America, Inc dated 12-22-59. Double-sided ALS from daughter of co-author E.S. Gosney, Lois Gosney Castle, to Goethe mounted to rear blank. Castle's message refers to the work of George Beadle.

Short ALS from George Beadle, an American geneticist who won the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of the role of genes in regulating biochemical events within cells, mounted on rear endpaper. Written California Institute of Technology Pasadena letterhead and dated Mon 20, no year given.

* Gould, Charles W. America: A Family Matter. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1922. [viii], 196 pp. Original navy cloth with gilt lettering, sans jacket. Front hinge cracked but holding, else Very Good. Typical pasted-on articles and notes from Goethe.

CC'd letter from Goethe to J.C. Russell dated 4-19-59; Russell's carbon copy of a letter of his to the Los Angeles Times mounted underneath that, dated April 23, 1959. Therein Russell writes against changes to the Immigration Act. CC'd letter from Goethe to unknown recipient dated 10-4-55 mounted on bottom margin of last page of index; he mentions funding The American Mercury, which was following a sharp Right-ward trajectory at the time.

CC'd letter from Goethe to South Carolina segregationist congressman Lucius Mandel Rivers, dated 4-3-57 mounted on verso. He thanks Rivers "for your leaflet reprint from Congressional Record" and adds in a postscript, "Do hope you are watching the assaults on the McCarran-Walter Immigration Code. With one alien, Displ[a]ced Person, Klaus Fuchs estimated to be costing us half of this 80% taxation load for military purposes, I am astounded that some of these naturalized citizens should continue to destroy immigration control as they have ever since the first 191 Quota Act."

Related TLS from the Vice President in Charge of Advertising of Mutual of Omaha (whose signature is difficult to read, name is unclear) to Goethe, dated August 27, 1953, mounted on rear endpaper. He writes to Goethe:

Thank you very much for your letter of August 24 with reference to the Bob Considine broadcast of August 23 and whose program Mutual of Omaha sponsors.

The other person mentioned in connection with Klaus Fuchs was Bruno Pontecorvo. In his script, Mr. Considine stated that both of these men were naturalized British subjects, and that Pontecorvo was able to leave Britain on the pretext of taking his family to Italy for a vacation, and was able from there to escape behind the Iron Curtain.

We hope this will give you the information you wanted, and are glad to be of assistance to you.

TLS from Ohio congressman Thomas A. Jenkins on official letterhead to Goethe, dated August 22, 1953, mounted to rear endpaper. He writes, "I have your good letter of August 11th, with reference to our friendship and my services here in Congress. I am sure that you and I will continue the fight so long as we can."

*Grant, Madison [Editor]; Davison, Charles Stewart [Editor]. The Alien in Our Midst: or, "Selling Our Birthright for a Mess of Pottage" The Written Views of A Number of Americans, (Present and Former) on Immigration and Its Results. New York: The Galton Publishing Company Co., Inc., 1930. [x], 238 pp. Original black pebbled cloth lettered in gilt, sans jacket. Typical marginal notes and pasted-on newspaper clippings, offsetting, else Near Fine. Rare.

Confidential Study Section Minutes of the Commonwealth Club of California, explicitly "CONFIDENTIAL: For Members Only and NOT for Publication," mounted on ffep. 2 pp. Dated May 22, 1957 on rear subheader. Subject: "Legislative Background of the Refugee Problem." Argues against accepting Displaced Persons, generally European refugees of WWII and the early Cold War, many of whom were Jewish.

Undated CC'd letter from Goethe to Russell Maguire, publisher of The American Mercury mounted on page facing title page. Goethe agrees to pay him $1,380.00 for 50,000 reprints of an article "by Mr. Arens in the March issue of" his publication, "in accordance with the agreement made on our behalf by Mr. John B. Trevor, Jr."

TLS from Luther A. Smith, a 33rd Degree Freemason and Sovereign Grand Commander, on pictorial letterhead of The Supreme Council of the thirty-Third and Last Degree, to Goethe dated September 16, 1957. Smith regrets that recipient, "Dear Brother Goethe," cannot make it to an upcoming October meeting. He expresses sympathy with Goethe's anti-immigration views, as America "is being overrun by various foreign peoples."

Undated typed notecard signed "EEG" mounted on bottom margin of p. 236.

SIGNED LETTERS FROM MADISON GRANT, PAUL POPENOE,
& RIGHT-WING AUTHOR JOHN O. BEATY

* Grant, Madison. The Conquest of a Continent: Or the Expansion of Races in America. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933. [xviii], 393 pp. Original cloth lettered in gilt, sans jacket. First edition. Front hinge starting, typical articles pasted on to endpapers, notes by Goethe. Good+. Uncommon.

TLS from Jack B. Tenney, State Senator in California, on letterhead of California Legislature Senate, dated May 6, 1953. Tenney writes to Goethe:

I notice that you mention [author] Madison Grant in your note to Mr. Hinchorn. I have always been desirous of securing a copy of his best book which was so effectually "stifled" by the A.D.L. [Jewish advocacy organization the Anti-Defamation League]. Do you know whether or not a copy of this work is obtainable?

I was interested in your little leaflet on Pasteurized Camel Milk.

A carbon copy of Goethe's response to Tenney is affixed underneath that letter. Dated 5-8-53, he writes that he does not know where the Senator can obtain a copy; it may be, in his estimation, one of the books that not-so-mysteriously disappears from libraries. Of the author he writes:

The late Mr. Grant was a dear personal friend of mine. He was badly crippled in his later years. We-2 used to go riding in Central Park in New York with him in his automobile. I always felt his death was hastened by what he felt was happening to his country. He knew his book had been apparently very well censored. He asked me to do everything I could to prevent it being entirely engulfed in oblivion.

What puzzles me is:- What is the difference between burning books by Hitler or Mussolini or Stalin and accomplishing the same thing in this adroit manner?

Note card affixed to blank space on copyright page appears to illustrate Goethe's point about alteration of the historical record via library theft. It is from a librarian at Aquinas College Library in Grand Rapids, Michigan, undated. She writes that she has received a copy of Heredity by "Dr. Roberts" for Goethe. "With the pages of addresses of Planned Parenthood publication removed the contents are otherwise acceptable."

TLS from John O. Beaty mounted on margin of dedication page, dated April 15, 1952. Beaty is best-known for his 1951 book Iron Curtain Over America, which galvanized the movement of far-Right figures in America that is sometimes referred to as the Secret Americans-- very conservative Cold War leaders (many either in the military or ex-military) who believed antisemitism was the fulfillment of true anti-communism. He answers Goethe's question about his religious views (he says he's Baptist, not a Methodist despite working at Southern Methodist University), writes about Iron Curtain's popularity at local bookstores but states that it has "been given the 'silent' treatment by the Quarterly Magazine, the Alumni Bulletin, and other official publications of the University."

CC'd passage written by Goethe about Grant and Stoddard's censorship mounted on p. vii.

TLS from eugenicist Paul Popenoe on The American Institute of Family Relations letterhead, dated May 18, 1957. He writes to Goethe:

Yes, I wrote more than 2/3 of Mr. Grant's book. He put up some money for research and I employed a graduate student at U.S.C. to gather material over a period of two years. As I look over the book I think I did a good job. Of course some of the things that he said in the chapters which he prepared gave offense to Jews and others and they carried out a systematic campaign to suppress the book, as you say. One never hears it mentioned or cited as a reference.

Another TLS from Popenoe attached to bottom margin of final page of index, on the same letterhead as the previously mentioned example, and dated March 18, 1952. Again in this earlier letter Popenoe claims he wrote approximately 2/3 of the book and that it was suppressed by Jewish interests.

Goethe's notes, perhaps on this text, are laid in. One note is double-sided, dated October 1933, and written in pencil on Hotel Canterbury, San Francisco stationary. Another note is on the verso of The Maurice's (another San Francisco hotel) stationary. Postmarked envelope from C.E. Packard of Ashland, VA dated January 16, 1964 with newspaper clipping inside also laid in. Long published positive review of the book dated 9/8/52 affixed to verso.

TLS from Madison Grant to Goethe mounted on facing page, dated March 30, 1927.

Dear Mr. Goethe:

I have your favor of March 25th and it fits in with our program here. We have decided to start a campaign attacking the activities of the foreign blocs who are attempting to control our legislature and who wish to retain the present unfair quotas of the Irish and Germans.

The National Origins plan was the only fair basis for a readjustment of the quotas, regardless of whether they are to be reduced or not.

I am sending your letter to Mr. Trevor who will probably write you also. I entirely agree with everything you say and I think we should take the offensive ourselves.

Very truly yours,

[signed] Madison Grant

v.R.

CC'd letter from Goethe to Charles Scribner's Sons dated 2-20-34. The publishers had offered to "supply circulars or other publicity material associated with this volume" to Goethe and his group to promote Grant's Conquest of a Continent. They also grant him permission to quote extensively from it in any reviews. This is detailed in a TLS from R.V. Coleman at the publisher to Goethe, dated February 13, 1934, which is mounted beneath Goethe's response. A bill from Circular Letter Company, a Sacramento company in the business of direct mail advertising, mounted beneath that. A cc'd letter from Goethe to Dr. Charles Wilner in mounted on the verso of that bill, dated 4-23-52.

TLS from Fred W. Emig, Past State Commander of Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, Department of Missouri, to Dr. Eugene Pitts at the Eugenics Society of Northern California, dated October 13, 1942, is mounted to facing page. Emig writes to Pitts,

Dear Sir:

Are you aware of the fact that your organization is listed in 'The Protestant Patriotic Directory'? The 'Directory' is published by the Monitor, a weekly anti-Catholic newspaper, at Aurora, Missouri.

This 'Directory' contains a heterogeneous list of organizations, some of which are bona fide and respected throughout the country. Others have long been known as subversive and inimical to the ideals of our democracy. Several of the latter type, which are named in the 'Directory', were recently indicted by the Federal Grand Jury on charges of conspiring to break down morale in the armed forces and thus 'obstruct and defeat the war effort.'

Emig surmises that this directory is an attempt to make all organizations mentioned therein appear to be anti-Catholic. He recommends that Pitts publicly disavow The Monitor and its directory, sending him a copy should he do so.

A typed, unsigned response to Emig by The Eugenics Society of Northern California is mounted beneath that, dated October 19, 1942. The letter's writer (probably Goethe) states, "The Society is not concerned with any religious or political controversy, being organized purely for scientific [holograph addition in pencil: "and educational"] purposes. [...] It scrupulously wishes to avoid any discussions of such kind as being entirely outside of its field."

TLS dated December 22, 1942 mounted beneath that. Therein Emig writes, clearly to a number of respondents, that The Monitor has suspended publication and that the organizations he has contacted were instrumental in shutting down "this un-American publication."

* Grant, Madison [Editor]; Davison, Charles Stewart [Editor]; Kelley, Ogden A. [Research Work]. The Founders of the Republic on Immigration Naturalization and Aliens. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928. 92 pp. Original black cloth lettered in gilt. Very Good, lacking jacket. Goethe hand lettered a spine label; a few crayon and ink marks as well as short clippings affixed to prelims and terminals. An uncommon book by Goethe's mentor, detailing the Founding Fathers thoughts on immigration and citizenship. No copies in the trade currently.

LETTERS FROM TWO FAR-RIGHT FIGURES

* Grant, Madison; Osborn, Henry Fairfield [Prefaces]. The Passing of the Great Race: Or, the Racial Basis of European History. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923. xxxii, [1], 476 pp. with color fold-out maps. Original cloth lettered in gilt, sans jacket. Fourth edition, revised. Typical notes and clippings throughout. Hinges shaken, offsetting.

Signed note from Goethe about this book being lent with expectation of being returned within 60 days mounted on paste down. On the facing page is mounted a list of pages with passages he would like to call attention to. Undated CC'd letter from Goethe mounted to inner margin of title page with his thoughts on the media's treatment of Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard; this same passage is found in other books in Goethe's library.

TLS from Thomas S. Leonard, Organising Secretary of the British-based Neo-Nazi organization The Northern League on its official letterhead, dated August 13, 1958. Leonard thanks Goethe for joining The Northern League and for pamphlets he has sent, as well as noting that Goethe "will receive regular copies of The Northlander and the periodic League progress reports."

Mounted underneath that is a CC'd letter from Goethe to longtime far-right figure Merwin K. Hart, President of the National Economic Council, dated 5-10-60 and marked "Confidential."Goethe writes of the dangers of an "Orientalized" American Pacific Coast, "the seriousness of the negro problem," and "the parallel infiltration of Puerto Rico [sic] negroes into Manhattan." He adds, "There are certain things that already have occured [sic] at Washington that writer does not dare mention in this letter. Perhaps you will know what I mean." An earlier TLS from Merwin K. Hart to Goethe, from May 29, 1957, follows, mounted on the facing page.

ANOTHER COPY WITH LETTERS FROM PROMINENT
POLITICIANS & MADISON GRANT

* Grant, Madison; Osborn, Henry Fairfield [Prefaces]. The Passing of the Great Race: Or, the Racial Basis of European History. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923. xxxii, [1], 476 pp. with color fold-out maps. Original cloth lettered in gilt, sans jacket. Fourth edition, revised. A Fair only copy with dampstaining and mold damage to cloth, worst to back board. Mold appears to have subsided but further remediation may be called for. Wrinkling and dampstaining to pages at rear. Typical notes and clippings throughout. Marked "Office Copy" on spine.

TLS mounted on margin of half-title from Harry E. Hull, Commissioner General of the U.S Department of Labor, Bureau of Immigration on official letterhead, dated July 11, 1927. He writes to Goethe:

My dear Sir:

Upon my return to the Bureau I find your letter of June 6, 1927, concerning the interest of your Commission in the legislation which I recommended in my annual report. I am pleased to note that you have under way a campaign which will, no doubt, have a great effect in influencing the people of the border states so concerned with the present influx of immigration.

Congress will more urgently feel the necessity for limiting the flow of immigration from countries of the Western Hemisphere when the people of this country voice their sentiments in its favor and, consequently, I feel that by giving the question a good deal of publicity you are going about the matter in the right way.

In launching such a campaign, I may suggest that the cooperation of influential men would add impetus to the movement. I am confident that if such men were convinced of the need of legislation restricting the number of aliens allowed to enter the United States from Certain countries of the Western Hemisphere they would heartily support any recommendation which you would see fit to make. [Holograph addition reads] I wish you success.

Typed note mounted to page facing title page from "Immigration Study Commission" (likely Goethe himself) dated July 21, 1927. They recommend "a new book by a Freemason, Dr. Lothrop Stoddard of Harvard University." It appears to be a pitch for Stoddard's book aimed at Freemasons.

TLS from H. Allen Smith, U.S. Congressman of the 20th District of California on official letterhead, dated July 16, 1959 affixed to margin of dedication page. Smith writes to Goethe:

In reply to your letter of July 9, as a member of the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration and naturalization, I feel certain that we will not approve any legislation this year to weaken the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act. Confidentially, I am satisfied that we won't even hear any. I am not making this statement for publication because of the many "do good" organizations that keep pressuring us to just everybody into the United States.

By the same token, I don't think we could ever pass legislation which would suspend all immigration until the cold war ends.

Empty envelope dated December 18, 1959, mailed via Army-Air Force Postal Service, addressed to Goethe, affixed to margins of final page of index.

Single page TLS from author Madison Grant, Goethe's mentor, dated August 6, 1927, mounted on terminal page. He writes of receiving Goethe's letter and looks forward to seeing him in California that October. In another TLS from Grant dated July 27 that same year he writes to Goethe that he would like to meet him and that, "I shall be interested to know whether or not you saw Albert Johnson in San Francisco."

A CC'd letter to that very politician, Johnson, at the House of Representatives, from Goethe dated 3-27-24 is mounted on the verso. Goethe writes of his efforts in promoting eugenics and ends with the post-script, "Your plan for the alien criminal violaters [sic] gives us another grasp of your wonderful statesmanship."

Undated 1 p. single-sided flyer for The Nordic Guard of Boston, Massachusetts mounted on rear endpaper. It consists of their "Declaration of Principles," with a handwritten address in Copley Square.

A THIRD COPY WITH A NOTE SUGGESTING
WELL-KNOWN WRITER KENNETH ROBERTS
FAKED JOURNALISM ABOUT CRIME
AT THE U.S./MEXICO BORDER

* Grant, Madison; Osborn, Henry Fairfield [Prefaces]. The Passing of the Great Race: Or, the Racial Basis of European History. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923. xxxii, [1], 476 pp. with color fold-out maps. Original cloth lettered in gilt, sans jacket. Fourth edition, revised. Typical notes and clippings throughout, a circle and a circle with an "X" in it drawn on spine. Good+.

Western Union Telegram dated 1-28-28 from Goethe to Mr. W.A. Neall c/o Saturday Evening Post in Philadelphia mounted on paste down. The body of the message reads in its entirety:

JUST RETURNED AGAIN FROM BORDER DO NOT KNOW KIMBALL YOUNG BURLINGAME STANFORD UNIVERSITY TELEGRAM SAYS KIMBAL YOUNG UNIVERSITY OREGON MONOGRAPHS VOLUME ONE NUMBER ELEVEN TWO REPORTS BUREAU RESEARCH LOSANGELES 1927 ALL AGREE WITHIN LIMITS MEXICANS AND SOUTH EUROPEANS [crossed out in pencil "AND"] THEIR HYBRIDS AVERAGE TWENTY OR MORE SCALE UNITS BELOW OLD AMERICAN STOCKS.

Typed slip regarding care of Goethe's loaned library books glued to ffep.

TLS from Madison Grant to Goethe dated September 4, 1927 mounted to verso of ffep. It's typed on pictorial stationary of The Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles bearing the unintentionally ironic tag line, "See America First." Grant reports having sent Goethe's last letter "to Dr. Laughlin of the 24th," and vows to send it along to Congressman Albert Johnson, "who will have charge of the next census. You are quite right about the racial difference between the italians North and those South of Rome." Grant also agrees that the officer class of both French and German armies has better genes and is more Nordic than their subordinates. In a holograph post-script he asks, "What is McClatchy's address?"

Another TLS from Grant dated May 27, 1928 on Arrowhead Springs Hotel stationary is mounted underneath that. He recommends "a vigorous attack" on opponents of "the Quota Act." A third TLS from Grant (again at the Ambassador Hotel) is affixed to the rear endpaper, dated May 3, 1928.

Double-sided ALS from Caroline Trevor, wife of the recently deceased John B. Trevor, Sr., dated March 12, 1956, mounted on page facing half-title. She thanks Goethe for helping her late husband "keep America American."

TLS from Hjalmur Danielson, Business and Circulation Manager of a Winnipeg-based publication called The Icelandic Canadian, dated March 16, 1956, mounted on dedication page margin. He thanks Goethe for a $20 check.

TLS from San Francisco Attorney Aaron M. Sargent dated October 10, 1958 requesting a copy of this book from Goethe, with a cc'd response dated a week later stapled to it, mounted on p. vi.

CC'd letter from Goethe to Russell Maguire at The American Mercury, dated 7-24-57 mounted to p. x.

Rare unused postcard from Eugenics Society of Northern California mounted on bottom margin of p. 476.

TLS from George Horace Lorimer, famous editor of The Saturday Evening Post on their letterhead, dated October 4, 1927, mounted on rear endpaper. Lorimer built The Post into the sales juggernaut that it was in the early 20th Century, giving writers such as Jack London and Kenneth Robert-- author of Northwest Passage and other historical novels, winner of a Letters Award from the Pulitzer Prize Committee. To quote from Roberts' Wikipedia entry:

While a reporter for the Saturday Evening Post in the early 1920s, Roberts wrote many magazine articles and a book during the period immediately following World War I that urged strong legal restrictions on immigration from eastern and southern Europe and from Mexico, warning of the dangers of immigration from places other than northwestern Europe. He became a leading voice for stricter immigration laws and testified before a congressional committee on the subject.

He wrote: “If America doesn’t keep out the queer alien mongrelized people of Southern and Eastern Europe, her crop of citizens will eventually be dwarfed and mongrelized in turn.”

Returning to the letter, Lorimer advises Goethe that a serial by Hal G. Evarts called "The Border Jumpers" set on the Mexican border will be published soon. Additionally his magazine is planning to deploy a correspondent along the border shortly "to have a look at conditions there."

In a follow-up TLS from Lorimer, dated November 21, 1927, he writes that he is forwarding Goethe's most recent letter to the border correspondent, a "Mr. Roberts," first name Kenneth. Mounted to verso of rear endpaper.

A Fourth TLS from Madison Grant, undated and mounted on the rear endpaper is very revealing. Grant asks Goethe in a postscript, "Have you seen Kenneth Roberts' recent articles on the Mexican situation in the Saturday Evening Post?"

Goethe has added his name to Roberts' in ink, as a co-author, with a short note in the margin, "Even Mad [Madison Grant] did not know K R [Roberts] and I wrote all of them in Los Angeles."

Here Goethe is perhaps revealing that The Post's border stories were concocted by him and Roberts up north in L.A. Goethe's sly note here may be of true historical and literary significance.

CC'd letter from Goethe to the editor of The Saturday Evening Post dated November 15, 1927 mounted underneath that, showing him at work fabricating tales of crime and racial degeneration at the Mexican border:

Dear Sir:-

At a border town some months ago two American girls were dishonored, it was alleged by a Mexican official. He was, I afterward understood, found "not guilty".

Before his trial however came the suicide of both girls, also their father, their mother. They came from a splendid old southern family.

Should you decide to send someone to The Border, as you did Kenneth Roberts in another immigration crisis to Europe, he might well study the vice situation in such border towns as Nogales, Mexicali, Tia Juana. I would be glad to give whomever you might so send, a letter of introduction to Hon. E.E. Grant, author of the Grant Redlight Abatement Act of California. He is probably the best informed man in California on vice control.

Sincerely,

President, Immigration Study Commission.

LETTER FROM SON OF THOMAS EDISON

* Groos, Karl; Baldwin, Elizabeth [Translator]; Baldwin, Mark [Preface]. The Play of Man. New York and London: D. Appleton and Company, 1914. ix, [1], 412 pp. Original black cloth with gilt spine lettering, lacking jacket. Later printing. Typical notes and clippings, else Near Fine.

TLS from Howard Braucher, President of National Recreation Association, to Goethe, dated April 22, 1947 and mounted on paste down. Braucher thanks for Goethe for his generous funding of "nature recreation." Ten years later he would be honored at an NRA banquet in Long Beach; the clipping of the article about this event pasted onto page facing first page of TOC. CC'd letter to Sterling Winans, California State Director of Recreation, dated 6-19-58, mounted to page facing first page of text; a TLS from Winans is mounted in the terminals. Small undated clipping on thick stock or mysterious postcard from Goethe's Eugenics Society of Sacramento mounted on page facing title page. Four more TLS from NRA higher-ups to Goethe mounted to terminals, as is a cc'd letter from Goethe to the Director of the Eaglet Theater in Sacramento, dated 11-13-59. ALS from Mrs. Howard Braucher mounted in terminals.

TLS from Theodore M. Edison, fourth son of famous inventor Thomas Edison, mounted on upper margin of first page of ads at rear. Dated January 17, 1957. Edison thanks Goethe for his work in nature preservation and expresses his and his family's ongoing interest in the National Recreation Association. CC'd letter dated 4-18-55 from Goethe to Susan Lee mounted on second page of ad; mounted on the following page is her four page handwritten, stapled letter to him expressing her interest in flowers. CC'd letter from Goethe to Joseph Lee of Boston, Mass. dated 4-27-27 mounted to rear paste down. Goethe writes:

I am intensely interested in your letter about Mr. Bradley's theory that "the worst thing the white men can do is to go in and conquer and run the black man's countries, for the reason that by governing those countries better he doubles and quadruples their population, thereby greatly promoting the rising of the tide of color." [...]

I am trying to develope [sic] this into a proposition as to whether Congress should pass the Boulder Dam Bill until she enacts the Box Act. [...] I do not want to see built up within the American tariff wall, if one wishes to use the term, a group exceeding the negro in number and of eugenical low grade Mexican peon blood. This is what is going to happen if we harness the Colorado River for the arid southwest and let the Mexicans pour over the Border as they are doing today.

RARE FIRST EDITION WITH CORRESPONDENCE
WITH NAZI IDEOLOGUE HANS GUNTHER

* Gunther, Hans F.K. The Racial Elements of European History. New York: E.P. Dutton and Company Publishers, [1927]. [viii], 279 pp. with 368 portraits and illustrations and 22 maps. Original crimson ribbed cloth, lettered in gilt. First American edition. Good with splitting along joints, frayed head, typical markings. Rare. An influential exposition of Indo-Aryan racial theories, that postulated that Nordic people had at one time conquered Asia, forming the dominant castes of India and Japan, and inspired Buddhism. After WWII he was a member of the UK-based Neo-Nazi organization The Northern League.

This particular item connects Goethe to European fascist individuals and racist ideologies/movements that arose before WWII and continued in its aftermath in a muted fashion. Paste down displays mounted TLS from Henri Lebre (1894-1976), a journalist described as being in the Executive Committee of the fascist, collaborationist Parti Populaire Francais in 1944 by an OSS document. Lebre gives his address in Portugal (a country notoriously friendly to Axis-aligned individuals) and mentions the book's author, notable Nazi eugenicist Hans F.K. Gunther. The letter is in French, dated August 11, 1956.

A carbon-copied response from Goethe is on the rear endpaper, addressed to Lebre and dated 8-21-56. Goethe expresses his high opinion of Gunther, noting his advanced age and that “We have held the line immigration control quite well over some 40 years. Meantime our population at the century's turn was only 75,000,000 [and] is now 180,000,000. It remains overwhelmingly 'Nordic.'” He writes that he has enclosed a small sum of money for Lebre to carry on his work.

A CC'd letter to “Congressman Walter” dated 7-31-57is affixed to the page facing first page; therein Goethe offers Walter cordial greetings with a Christian theme and states that Walter has given him addresses of influential figures, which he has found useful.

A piece of paper, perhaps part of an envelope, with a London address is mounted on the front free endpaper. Various newspaper clippings mounted on endpapers. A two page stapled newsletter “News and Comments from Congress by Wint Smith, 6^th District, Kansas” is stapled to the rear endpaper.

Small envelope addressed to Goethe with a German Christmas card inside (no inscription) is mounted to the half-title; it might be from Gunther to Goethe, perhaps like the postcard from Gunther mentioned by Goethe in a cc'd letter to him mounted at the rear, dated 9-11-53. Goethe responds to a request from Gunther for info about the eugenics movement in America:

You ask whether Immigration Study Commission still exists. I was its President during its entire lifetime. Its work is finished and it has gone out of business. Unfortunately, Galton Publishing also is no longer in existence. I regret this very much. How I wish I could take a plane and have an hour with you to tell you about a lot of things that are happening in U.S.A. Honestly, I feel we have a censorship worse than any I ever knew under any Totalitarian government in Europe, outside of Russia.

He finishes by noting that he has enclosed “a small friendship check.”

Gunther's TLS (in German), which occasioned the above response, is attached after that. It is dated 18.8.53. The German professor's theories influenced Nazi racial ideology immensely; for example, his definition of race was quoted in Nazi propaganda, and Hitler is reputed to have owned six of his books in his personal library.

RARE BOOK WITH SIGNED LETTER
FROM EUGENICIST MAURICE BIGELOW

* Hinton, J.P.; Calcutt, Josephine. Sterilization: A Christian Approach. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1935. 196, [4, ads] pp. Original yellow cloth with navy lettering, sans jacket. First edition. A Very Good copy with text free of markings but some articles affixed to endpapers, cloth a little stained. Rare. No copies currently for sale in the trade.

TLS from Elsie Wulkop of The Human Betterment League of North Carolina affixed to paste down, dated December 20, 1948. Wulkop wrote The Social Worker in a Hospital Ward and was active in the birth control movement.

Generic fundraising letter from James Hanes of the HBLNC mounted on p. 187 bottom margin. Clipping from an anti-juvenile delinquency/eugenics document published by Human Better Association of America in clippings at front. TLS from Louis Ibbotson, Librarian at University of Maine dated March 8, 1955 mounted to terminals.

2 pp. TLS from eugenicist Maurice Bigelow to Goethe dated June 9, 1952 mounted to rear endpaper. From 1940-1945 he served as president of the American Eugenics Society. He tells Goethe that at 80 his work is winding down and that he is spending most of his time currently caring for his wife.

* Holmes, Samuel J. The Eugenic Predicament. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1933. xi, [1], 232 pp. Original crimson cloth with gilt spine lettering, sans jacket. First edition. Typical notes from Goethe and clippings affixed to endpapers. Bumped corners.

Samuel Jackson Holmes (1868-1964) was a professor whose “primary areas of teaching and research included experimental morphogenesis, genetics, animal behavior, and eugenics,” according to the Finding Aid of his papers at the Bancroft Library at University of California, Berkeley.

Spanish-language TLS to Goethe from Leonardo A. Colombo and Carlos Bernaldo de Quiros of Sociedad Argentina de Eugenesia (Argentine Eugenics Society) dated May 23, 1953 mounted on rear paste down. Apparently SADE was the premier eugenics society in Argentina, founded in 1945, which continued until the 1970s.

*Holmes, Samuel J. Human Genetics and Its Social Import. New York: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1936. viii, 414 pp. Publisher's black cloth with gilt spine lettering and ruling, sans jacket. First edition, third impression. Typical notes and pasted-on articles from Goethe, else Very Good. Signed greeting card from the young son of the President of the University of Oklahoma, dated 4-15-59, stapled to verso of ffep. Warm 2pp. ALS from Holmes to Goethe, dated December 22, 1949, mounted to rear endpaper.

CC'd letter from Goethe to Raymond L. Taylor, Associated Administrative Secretary of the American Association for the Advancement of Science mounted to inner margin of half-title, dated 6-8-60. The AAAS is the world's largest general scientific society and publishers of the journal Science. Mounted underneath that are two TLS from Eldon J. Gardner of The American Society of Human Genetics at Utah State Agricultural College, dated May 6, 1957 and July 5, 1957. In both letters Gardner thanks Goethe for his financial contributions.

TLS from H.L. Shapiro, President of the American Eugenics Society, to Goethe, dated November 4, 1959, mounted on upper margin of TOC.

ALS from the Director of Jacksonville Blood Bank Inc., Lucien Y. Dyrenforth, M.D. dated November 26, 1963 mounted to verso of p. 403 with yellowed tape.

Undated TLS from George H. Mickey, Chairman of the Department of Zoology, Physiology and Entomology at Louisiana State University affixed to rear end paper.

SIGNED FIRST EDITION WITH GOETHE'S LETTER
TO PLANNED PARENTHOOD

*Holmes, Samuel J. The Negro's Struggle for Survival. University of California Press, 1937. xii, 296 pp. Original crimson cloth with spine lettered in gilt, lacking jacket. First edition. Inscribed to “Mr. CM. Goethe with the regards of the writer” on front free endpaper. Very Good+ with entire body of main text free of Goethe's notes. In this work Holmes argues that the supremacy of either the White or Black races/species would depend upon their net fertility and mortality rates.

Lots of clippings pasted on prelims and terminals jejune to African American population, race mixing, and crime such as “Negroes Lead Capital Count,” “Negro Singer, Socialite Wed,” “Negroes Played a Highly Important Role in Acquittal of Jimmy Hoffa,” “Geneticist Says Negro Will Vanish By Mixing Into Whites.” The article “Negro Honor Student, White Coed Are Wed” pasted onto the margin of page of the TOC has Goethe's crayon scrawl “NEW KIND OF MULATTO” with an arrow pointing to the interracial couple. CC'd letter from Goethe to a Dr. Mrs. Richey, dated 12-31-58, mounted on bottom of ffep. Therein Goethe reminisces about a Navajo woman he once met who refused to marry a white man, as “'he would probably be lowgrade mentally. I am determined not to be the mother of half-breeds.'” She apparently was Goethe's type, socially at least.

TLS from retired Rear Admiral William Rea Furlong mounted on next page:

March 27, 1959.

Dear Mr. Goethe,

Thank you very much for the interesting little book on your travels and conversation with Dr. Lenoir.

How true your conclusions for breeding a better man.

I have in recent years written the resolutions passed by three national societies against attempts to change the McCarran immigration Act. […] I raised the ire of the editor of the N.Y. Times who wanted to know what I meant by saying that if we continue to let in the peolpe [sic] from Italy and from France who are steeped in communism and if w let in the Costellos, Hoffas and others whose ideas of right and wrong are so different from the principles on which the Government was founded, our form of Government would change. The ethics of a people will form the Government.

The adult population of Washington [D.C.] is 50% black. The school population was reported last year as 75% black. The blacks are breeding so fast that there should be a campaign to teach the blacks means of contraception.

Last year I appeared before the Eastlands [sic] Committee on proposed changes in McCarran Act. Eastland headed off a bill of Senator Kennedy's but this year Kennedy says he will bring in another bill to liberal ize the Act.

Section of a typed circular by Goethe attached to next page, dated 9-18-59. Page of Human Events attached to left inner margin of first page of TOC.

Small cc'd note from Goethe to William Vogt, National Director of Planned Parenthood dated 9-19-60 affixed to rear paste down. Goethe writes:

As you know, our family has roots in The South. Hence writer's contacts with social service groups down there. Over the last few years, it has seemed evident that negro mothers of many children, some running up into 10 to 14, 16 are almost frantic for the material you are furnishing. Do not know whether you are working in this field. In any event, herewith is another widow's mite for the same.

To paraphrase, Goethe had explicitly enclosed funds to Planned Parenthood for population control of African Americans in the South.

* Hooton, Earnest Albert. Twilight of Man. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1939. x, 308 pp. Original navy cloth lettered in gilt, lacking jacket. Typical newspaper clippings pasted on endpapers, a few check marks in margins and underlines by Goethe. Hooton was an influential physical anthropologist and author whose views on race and intelligence were closer to mainstream views today than most of his contemporaries, much less deterministic.

Undated note from Julian Wolfsohn, M.D. to Goethe on the doctor's prescription pad mounted on front free endpaper.

Mounted on verso of ffep is TLS from Lewis Terman, Department of Psychology at Stanford to Goethe dated April 28, 1956. He recommends a book called They Went to College published by Harcourt in 1948. Another TLS from Terman is mounted on the rear endpaper, dated December 6, 1950.

TLS from Ernest W. Burgess, Department of Sociology at The University of Chicago dated October 1, 1952 mounted on half-title. Burgess (1886-1966) was the 24th President of The American Sociological Society. Burgess writes to Goethe, "It was good to hear from you because I know of your splendid work in the field of eugenics." He says that he is looking forward to seeing Goethe at the National Council on Family Relations in September 1954.

TLS from T.S Petersen, President of Standard Oil Company of California, dated October 12, 1953 mounted on verso of frontispiece. Apparently Goethe, a stockholder, had reacted favorably to an ad concerning Standard Oil's "employee Stock purchase plan. Your observations on the influence of advertising over the size of the American families are indeed worthy of reflection."

TLS from Angelina Shishamnovitch, Librarian at an unspecified institution in Belgrade, then in Yugoslavia. Dated May 26, 1955 and mounted on copyright page. She thanks Goethe for her library's free subscription to Eugenics Quarterly.

Laid in single page note, half-typed, half-holograph with holograph corrections, entitled "Fitbad Shoat." Undated. Perhaps a short piece of writing by Goethe.

Signed CC'd letter from Goethe to the editor of The Saturday Evening Post, dated September 30, 1927. He writes as President of the Immigration Study Commission to try to suggest the paper cover illegal immigration at the Mexican border.

CC'd letter from Goethe to House Rep. Albert Johnson in Washington, D.C. dated December 31, 1927 mounted on rear paste down. Goethe is responding to Johnson's calls for a letter-writing campaign in favor of "the Deportation Bill":

The Sacramento Church Federation is therefore mailing to them the recently printed vice map of California, petitioning that deportation be speeded up. Incidentally their findings were that practically no cases of systematic vice exploitations are found within the Nordic group. Most of this comes from (1st) South and Eastern Europeans (2nd) Orientals. The latter largely narcotics (3rd) Mexicans.

TLS from Albert Johnson that occasioned the above response, dated December 19, 1927, mounted underneath.

WITH SIGNED ALS FROM IRVING FISHER

* Jordan, Davis Starr; Jordan, Harvey Ernest. War's Aftermath: A Preliminary Study of the Eugenics of War as Illustrated by the Civil War of the United States and the Late Wars of the Balkans. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1914. xxxi, [1], 104 pp. Dark gray cloth with silver lettering, sans jacket. Early printing of the first edition with undated title page. Typical notes and clippings from Goethe, else Very Good. Uncommon.

ALS from Irving Fisher to Goethe, on Fisher's Yale University letterhead, dated August 26, 1924. As stamped note in margins explains, "Please excuse this summary way of replying, while traveling without a secretary"-- it's a short note wherein Fisher thanks Goethe for his suggestion re: National Geographic Magazine. Today Fisher is best remembered for his writings on economics (specifically on financial speculation), but he was also a Progressive ideologue who actively promoted eugenics.

Christmas card from co-author David Starr Jordan and his wife mounted on facing page.

SIGNED LETTERS FROM S.J. HOLMES
& JOHN B. TREVOR, SR.

*Josey, Charles Conant. Race and National Solidarity. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923. ix, [3], 227 pp. Black cloth with red lettering, lacking jacket. Very Good with very little marking, mottling to cloth at spine and back board. Rare.

Two clipped newspaper articles about immigration law changes, and one about the Rudolph Abel spy case, pasted onto prelims.

Letter from S.J. Holmes on his University of California, Department of Zoology letterhead to Goethe, dated January 13, 1925, mounted on paste down; Goethe's notes in crayon on recto and in ink on verso covering paste down. Holmes writes in regards to a proposed section on eugenics, presumably at a natural history museum, expressing his support. Later clipped report from anti-integration group American States Rights Association of Birmingham, Alabama (ca. 1954) mounted on facing page, detailing statistics of African American and prison populations.

TLS from John B. Trevor, Jr. on his letterhead, dated November 1, 1957, mounted on copyright page. Trevor thanks Goethe for his support of the American Coalition, presumably a permutation of his late father's umbrella organization American Coalition of Patriotic Societies. Both father and son sought to amalgamate various American conservative and far right groups into such an organization over a span of many decades. Trevor Sr. was not only one of the foremost advocates of immigration restriction, his background in military intelligence (with its explicitly racist and anti-Semitic ideology in the first half of the 20^th Century as elucidated by Joseph Bendersky in his 2001 book The Jewish Threat) aided him in anti-subversive record gathering and counterintelligence that spanned the private and public spheres, extending into the early Cold War. Trevor Jr. would go on to direct the Pioneer Fund, a non-profit that to this day is America's foremost proponent of eugenics. He writes to Goethe:

I recall the many times my father spoke of you, and of how essential your support and advice was in the many fights you went through together. We are fortunate in having your continued interest. I appreciate very much receiving the copies of your letters, as well as the small pamphlets you put out from time to time. Our problems dont [sic] seem to be getting any easier, but fortunately we do have a few people who do seem to want to help out, coming into the group gradually.

SCARCE NEW YORK STATE ANTI-IMMIGRATION REPORT

* Laughlin, Harry H.; Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York. A Report of the Special Committee on Immigration and Naturalization Submitting a Research on Conquest by Immigration. May 15, 1939. 267 pp. Original blue wraps bound in period green ribbed cloth with gilt lettering, presumably by Goethe. Very Good with a moderate amount Goethe's check marks, notations, and articles pasted on endpapers. An offprint of a New York state committee chaired by eminence grise of the American Right, John B. Trevor, Sr. The main body of the report was written by Laughlin of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Scarce in the trade with no copies currently available for sale located.

Single sheet folded and attached to front paste down, titled “Expense to Taxpayers for Mentally Sick Aliens,” a publication of American Coalition [presumably John Trevor Jr.'s group] based Washington, D.C. According to Goethe's crayon note on its verso, “The Photostat. 9 / 57. To All Congress”-- he may have had it sent to all sitting members of the U.S. Congress.

RARE BOOK WITH TLS FROM NEVADA
SENATOR PAT McCARRAN

* Orebaugh, David. Crime, Degeneracy and Immigration: Their Interrelations and Interreactions. Boston: Richard G. Badger, Publisher, 1929. XVI, 272 pp. Original purple cloth lettered in gilt, sans jacket. First edition. Typical notes and newspaper clippings affixed to endpapers, else Very Good. Uncommon; no copies currently for sale in the trade.

CC'd letter from Goethe to Russell Maguire, editor of The American Mercury dated 5-9-57 pasted on paste down.

TLS from Ohio Rep Thomas A. Jenkins dated August 30, 1954 mounted to page facing title page. He writes to Goethe, "I have your communication of the 25th with reference to these fellows who are fighting the Immigration Law. Keep up the good work."

TLS from Scott McLeod at the Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs in the Department of State dated May 6, 1957 mounted on copyright page. He thanks Goethe for his friendly letter.

U.S. Senator from Nevada from 1933-1954, Pat McCarran penned the TLS affixed to the bottom margin of p. 272, dated October 19, 1952.

My dear friend Goethe:

I am deeply appreciative of your kindness in sending the picture of my daughter, Sister M. Mary Mercy, printed in the Sacramento Union.

Please know that I am grateful to you for your fine work on the MacCarran-Walter Immigration Act.

My kindest regards and all best wishes to you.

Sincerely,

[signed] Pat McCarran

McCarran is most often remembered for The Internal Security Act of 1950, also known as the McCarran Act and the "Concentration Camp Law," giving the federal government the right to detain "subversives" indefinitely in the event of an ill-defined "internal security emergency." It also forced Communist organizations to register with the U.S. Attorney General.

* Page, Kirby; Fosdick, Harry Emerson [Introduction]. War: Its Causes, Consequences, and Cure. New York: George H. Doran Company, 1923. 215 pp. Original ribbed cloth with gilt spine lettering, sans jacket. First edition, third printing. Near Fine with Goethe's private library stamp to ffep but no other notes or pastings, etc. A pacifist work by a Christian minister and peace activist.

INCLUDES AN APPEAL FROM A JAPANESE EUGENICS GROUP

* Pearl, Raymond. The Biology of Population Growth. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1925. xiv, 260 pp. Original navy cloth with gilt spine lettering, lacking jacket. First edition. Typical notes from Goethe and newspaper clippings, else Very Good. Uncommon.

Undated 2 pp. TLS from Shunichi Nishikura, Representative Director of Foundation For the Promotion of Population Measures in Japan mounted to half-title margin. Nishikura is clearly seeking funds to launch a large eugenics organization in Japan from wealthy American patrons like Goethe. No information about this group found online in a cursory English-language search.

* Pendell, Elmer. The Next Civilization. Jacksonville, Alabama: The Author, 1960. 238 pp. Original red cloth lettered in black. Likely first edition. Inscribed to Goethe by the author, dated February 17,1960. A few underlines and notes from Goethe throughout text, articles pasted onto endpapers.

SIGNED BY EUGENICIST HARRY LAUGHLIN

* Perkins, Harry et. al. A Decade of Progress in Eugenics: Scientific Papers of the Third International Congress of Eugenics held at American Museum of Natural History New York, August 21-23, 1932. Baltimore: The Williams & Wilkins Company, 1934. xi, [1], 531 pp. with photos throughout. Original blue cloth lettered in gilt, sans jacket. Inscribed "To Mr. C.M. Goethe -- American Eugenicist, with the highest regards of [signed] H.H. Laughlin." Harry Hamilton Laughlin (1880-1943) was the primary architect of American mandatory sterilization laws and a tireless advocate of eugenics. Occasional marginal marks and articles pasted onto endpapers, else Near Fine.

TLS from Rodger Bishton, Associate Professor at Education at Sacramento State College, to Goethe, dated October 10, 1960, pasted onto rear endpaper. He asks for Goethe's $300 check to be publicized as the initial funds for a gifted program in the area.

INCLUDES SIGNED LETTER BY
EUGENICIST PAUL POPENOE

* Popenoe, Paul; Johnson, Roswell Hill. Applied Eugenics. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922. xii, [2], 459 pp. Original pebbled navy cloth with gilt lettering and ruling on spine, lacking jacket. Early printing of the first edition. Very Good with typical notes, etc. The standard American textbook on the subject of eugenics in the early 20^th century.

2 pp. carbon copied note, 8.5” x 11”, mounted on paste down, titled “Brief history of the ancestors of Jacob Adrian Snider written by him from his recollection of verbal conversations in the family:-” It appears to be an account by a Mr. Snider of his family history. Goethe's notes, apparently unrelated to this clipping, and a newspaper clipping (also unrelated) are on its verso and the surrounding are of the paste down.

On the facing front free endpaper is a folded mounted TLS from the book's author on his stationary, to Goethe, dated January 31, 1924:

Dear Mr. Goethe:

Has your committee on the study of immigration questions progressed far enough to make you willing to write something about its plans for the Journal of Heredity? I am sure it would be welcomed by eugenists [sic]. The question of racial values is certainly uppermost in the public mind, to an extent that most of us could not have dared hope.

Cordially yours,

[signed] Paul Popenoe.

Envelope from an unknown corespondent in British Guiana mounted to next page, along with laid-in four page folded document “Charter Members of the Eugenics Society of the United States of America.” Perhaps it was a separate publication, perhaps not. Typical pasted-on articles and notes throughout endpapers, plus a United States postage stamp bearing the motto “Employ the Handicapped” pasted on title page by Goethe, probably with dark irony.

Conference program of International Federation of Eugenic Organizations Conference at Scheweningen, The Hague, Holland mounted to copyright page. One page, single-sided. Year unknown.

Carbon copy of a single-page letter from Goethe to “General Frederick Osborn, Secretary, American Eugenics Society, Inc.” mounted on facing page. It is hand-dated 6/2 [19]60 and initialed by Goethe. He reminisces about funding The Journal of Human Genetics during its time of need, and thanks Osborn for his recent two-year report.

Among Goethe's notes on the clippings he has attached to the TOC page, he notes executions of Soviet 60,000 officers in Stalinist purges in the '30s, and writes the cryptic note, “STRATEGY: DESTROY LEADERSHIP ALSO CASTRO 1962 IN CUBA USED NEAR MORON 1/3 OF CORTES/ AZTECS – PIZARRO – PERU.”

In a carbon copied letter to an unknown recipient dated 7/22 60 Goethe reflects on his and the recipient's successes over their lives, working together. These success are “(a) The Playground Movement,” “(b) our' Tahoe Laboratory,' now 'National Park Ranger Naturalist Movement['] and classed as the world's greatest Summer School with over 18,000,000 registrants,” “(c) Anticipating the population explosion,” “(d) Human Genetics,” (e) reversing the low birth rate of intellectuals, and (f) “our own contribution in the field of the Gifted Child.”

Another carbon copied letter is mounted to the margin of the first page of the introduction. It is addressed to Ladies Home Journal from Goethe concerning Popenoe, dated 8-26-60. A note thanking Goethe for his marmalade by an unknown woman follows, mounted to the upper margin of the same page. A modified form of the letter to the Ladies Home Journal, this time addressed to the editor of The Los Angeles Times is mounted in the margin of the first page of the main text, dated 10/3 60. TLS from Popenoe to Goethe bearing the letterhead of The American Institute of Family Relations, dated February 27, 1964, is laid in at p. 420, where it had once been taped in a bottom margin. A letter from the secretary of Oregon Academy of Science to Goethe dated January 19,1960 is mounted in the bottom margin of p. 459. A CC'd letter to Popenoe dated 3-9-60 is mounted on rear endpaper. Mounted on the verso of that is a letter presumably to Goethe informing him of his election to The Eugenics Society, signed by the British organization's secretary, dated July 20, 1927. TLS from the dean of College of Medicine at The Ohio State University, dated February 14, 1953, is attached to the facing page. Mounted to the verso of that page is a letter from Roswell H, Johnson, President of American Eugenics Society, Inc. dated April 1, 1927, discussing the Box Act and recent immigration legislation.

A cc'd letter to Popenoe in Coachella, CA dated 4-29-24 is attached to the next page. Goethe writes:

I am much interested in what you say regarding birth control. If the immigration bill finally becomes law, I will have time for further reflection on this. Even then you and I know that those opposed have not quit. I have studied mass-psychology in Germany before the war [WWI] and I concluded it was never wise to quit fighting until twenty to twenty-five years had elapsed and our ideals were actually crystallized into community habits.

Mounted underneath that is an earlier TLS from Popenoe dated March 31, 1924. It reads in part:

As to the birth control propaganda, I'm about ready to throw up my hands. That problem seems to be insoluble. I think the propaganda as is carried on is harmful; but it can't be stopped. The only thing to do is to push all the more strongly the propaganda for “birth release”; for a general readjustment of the size of the family all up and down the line. For it is absolutely certain that, as things stand now, the smart people are learning, or have learned, how to have fewer children; the stupid ones won't and can't.

Two small cc'd letters from Goethe to undisclosed recipients follow, pasted onto rear endpaper and paste down.

SIGNED FIRST EDITION WITH TWO TLS'S
FROM GENETICIST SHELDON REED

* Reed, Sheldon C. Counseling in Medical Genetics. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company, 1955. viii, 268 pp. Original cloth, lacking jacket. First edition. A Good copy with typical notes from Goethe and articles pasted onto endpapers, “To SE” written in pen on front board. Inscribed by author to Goethe on first blank page. A biologist and geneticist with a Ph. D but no medical degree who did a stint in WWII interrogating captured German scientists, Sheldon C. Reed is most famous for coining the term “genetic counseling.” This book was a breakthrough in awareness of the field, aimed a general audience.

A letter dated February 3, 1956 from Reed is stapled to the rear endpaper, with a cc of Goethe's letter that preceded it mounted on the page beneath. Reed writes to Goethe:

I was disgusted at the review but more disgusted with Snyder the editor who accepted it. The book should not have been sent to Penrose^* anyway – as he has always been opposed to genetic counseling and is at least surrounded by Communists – if not one himself. His real complaint – which he did not mention was the radiation chapter. The Soviet line of course is that the U.S. should give [up?] atom bomb tests, while they keep testing themselves. My chapter rejects their line.

A second letter from Reed is folded and mounted on the facing page, the rear paste down. It's dated August 17, 1955, and is on the letterhead of The Dight Institute for Human Genetics at University of Minnesota. Therein Reed thanks Goethe for his encouragement about this very book (“so instrumental in getting it written”) and funding.

* Siegfried, Andre. Europe's Crisis. New York: John Wiley and Sons, [n.d.]. 128 pp. Blue cloth with red lettering, sans jacket. Good with Goethe's typical marginal notes and abbreviations, but no letters or articles pasted in.

INCLUDES INTRIGUING TELEGRAM
FROM WRITER KENNETH ROBERTS

* Stoddard, Lothrop. Clashing Tides of Colour. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1935. [x], 414 pp. Original crimson cloth lettered in gilt, lacking jacket. Presentation copy of the first edition, inscribed to Goethe by author on page facing title page. A few marginal check marks by Goethe top early pages, but it quickly peters out; articles pasted on endpapers. Very Good.

A brittle document is mounted to the front paste down with Goethe's note, "This is the famous Sat. Eve. Post telegram" on its verso. It is a Western Union Telegram with a closed tear that reads:

330F AD 23 NL

SANANTONIO TEX NOV 24 1927

C M GOETHE

IMMIGRATION STUDIO MISSION CAPITAL NATL BANK BLDG

SACRAMENTO CALIF

CAN YOU MEET ME BILTMORE LOSANGELES IN FOUR TO SIX

DAYS FROM NOW BRINGING ALL POSSIBLE MEXICAN DATA WIRE CASADEL

NORTE HOTEL ELPASO

KENNETH L ROBERTS

1136 PM

Goethe's response affixed to the corner of that document, a Western Union Telegram dated 11-25-27. Goethe basically writes that he's on his way and is busy but wanted to respond. This refers to the L.A. meeting with future-novelist/ then-journalist Kenneth Roberts wherein Roberts' stories about crime on the U.S. Mexico border were secretly written.

TLS from John Box on U.S. House of Representatives letterhead, dated February 6, 1928, mounted on ffep. He writes to Goethe, "I thank you for your letter of the 26th instant. I have just wired you as follows: 'Please mail quick authentic estimate foreign born Mexican population Sacramento nineteen twenty seven or latest non labor source preferred.'" He notes that he has requested similar figures of the Mexican-born population of San Francisco and Los Angeles.

CC'd letter from the Secretary to Goethe at the Immigration Study Commission to publishers Doubleday, Doran & Company informing them of Goethe's illness. Dated February 13, 1930. The assistant writes, "Gentlemen:- Mr. Goethe is ill. He picked up an infection among the Mexicans while down on the border where he was working."

Prospectus for book The More Perfect Union by Robert M. MacIver folded and affixed to rear endpaper. 4pp. Published by the Macmillan Company.

* Stoddard, Lothrop. Racial Realities in Europe. New York: Charles Scribner's, 1924. [viii], 252 pp. Original dark green cloth lettered in yellow with red stamping, sans jacket. First edition. Typical notes throughout, articles pasted on endpapers. Note from a Ralph Pohefe[?] to Goethe mounted on half-title. Anecdote about what author (Stoddard) once said handwritten underneath that.

CC'd letter dated 8-12-65 from Goethe to a "Giles"in France laid in at rear. Therein Goethe muses about the prevalence of blue eye color in France, its racial stock, and its decreased standing in the world.

INCLUDES SIGNED LETTERS FROM
CARTOONIST DING DARLING, LOTHROP STODDARD,
AND THE SATURDAY EVENING POST'S EDITOR

* Stoddard, Lothrop. Re-Forging America: The Story of Our Nationhood. New York: Charles Scribner's, 1927. viii, [2], 389 pp. Publisher's black cloth with gilt lettering. Typical notes and newspaper clippings, else Very Good. CC'd not regarding the media's treatment of Stoddard and Grant affixed to inner margin of p. vii.

Typed note pasted onto ffep quoting a J.C. Russell at a Rotary Club luncheon, concerning immigration. TLS from John Finger, Past President of John Trevor Sr.'s group American Coalition, dated March 20, 1951, affixed beneath that. Finger thanks Goethe for his diligence in promoting "alertness on immigration [...] on the West coast."

TLS from Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Ding Darling, the pen name of Jay N. Darling, on his Register and Tribune letterhead, dated November 11, 1954, affixed to preliminary blank. He thanks Goethe for a letter and writes:

I have a difficult time keeping alive my earlier hopes of making a dent in the thick skulls of our populace on the subject of what Dr. Stoddard calls the death struggle between Bolshevism and Biology. The swelling tides of bulging populations seem to sweep over and demolish all the evidence of of the dire consequences of over-population. Only now and then do I come across one of the scattered few whose conclusions parallel mine and I swear that I can't believe that the human mind can possibly be so stupid.

TLS from Scott McLeod, Administrator at the Department of State, dated May 11, 1955, affixed to page facing title page. He thanks Goethe for his support.

ALS from Harriet McCarran, daughter of deceased Senator Pat McCarran, dated June 24, 1956 stapled to dedication page. She thanks Goethe for his support of her father and his anti-immigration activism.

TLS from Lothrop Stoddard dated June 28, 1927 affixed to terminal blank. He thanks Goethe's for his insight into this book and calls him "patriotic" and a "far-sighted citizen." Another TLS from Stoddard dated October 1, 1927 is affixed to the facing page; Stoddard thanks Goethe for the publicity in favor of this book and vows to send a copy to a publication called The Foreword as per Goethe's suggestion.

TLS from U.S. Senator from Kansas, Charles Curtis, dated December 15, 1928 affixed to terminal blank. Curtis assures Goethe that he will "bring your suggestions to the attention of the proper Committee of the Senate having charge of" the Immigration Quota Act. He ends with "As you know I have always been in favor of the strict enforcement of the Immigration Laws.

TLS from the editor of The Saturday Evening Post, George Horace Latimer, on their letterhead dated December 13, 1927, affixed to rear endpaper. He thanks Goethe "for the clipping, which I am forwarding to Mr. Roberts" who is "settling down to work on his series." (See above entries about Kenneth Roberts.)

* Stoddard, Lothrop; Grant, Madison [Introduction]. The Rising Tide of Color: Against White World-Supremacy. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920. xxxii, 320 pp. with three color fold-out maps. Original green cloth lettered in gilt. First edition. A Good copy with two holes in title page, perhaps from removed articles; offsetting to endpapers, front hinge overopened. Lots of notations by Goethe and articles pasted on endpapers, including a critical review of the book affixed to the paste down. All maps present-- despite their and the book itself's content they are actual very pretty. One of the most influential eugenics and anti-immigration books of all time, and clearly an important book to Goethe.

Empty envelope affixed to page facing title page from Goethe's Immigration Study Commission in Sacramento, addressed to Hon. Albert Johnson, House of Representatives, Washington D.C. with 25 cents of postage (a lot for the time, one imagines) and the designation "Aeroplane Letter."

CC'd undated note from Goethe mentioning Grant and Stoddard's treatment by the media mounted to inner margin of first page of introduction.

* Wallace, Victor H. Women and Children First: Outline of a Population Policy for Australia. Melbourne, Australia: Geoffrey Cumberlege / Oxford University Press, 1946. xv, [1], 350 pp. Original crimson cloth, spine lettered in silver, sans jacket. Good+ with sunned spine, cloth soiled edge-rubbed. Articles pasted on endpapers with Goethe's notes in text.

CC'd letter from him to a "Mr. Miller" in Australia dated 1-17-61 mounted on inner margin of title page. Another cc'd letter dated 10-27-50 from Goethe to the author, Victor Wallace, mounted on rear paste down. He praises Wallace's work, "In it you mention service m[ illegible with trimmed margins?] demanding deportation of all aliens and confiscation of their property. They were indignant that the rat-like people entered your Commonwealth and acquire[d] wealth while they were in the foxholes. You justly say they have cause for complaint." A little further down he writes:

the Socialist-minded gang at Washington seem to be willing to trade almost anything for votes. There is a highly vocal minority, apparently with plenty of money, who are hammering to amend to death our Quota Acts. The only serious dent they have made has been the Displaced Persons Act. It is rumored already we are commencing to deport some that entered thereby.

FIRST EDITION SIGNED BY LEON WHITNEY,
EUGENICIST & DESCENDANT OF ELI WHITNEY

* Whitney, Leon F. The Basis of Breeding. New Haven: Earl C. Fowler, Publisher, 1928. [x], 260 pp. Original blue cloth lettered in gilt. First edition. Inscribed by the author, a descendant of cotton gin creator Eli Whitney, veterinarian, and prominent eugenicist, to Goethe on ffep, September 19, 1928. According to A. E Samaan, Whitney was also related to Pioneer Fund head Wickliffe Draper and expressed admiration for Hitler. Typical marginal check marks by Goethe and newspaper clippings on endpaper, else Near Fine.

2 pp. ALS from Leon Whitney to Goethe dated 10/8/52 mounted to page facing title page. Whitney amiably writes about publishing and writing on the letter's first page. On the verso he gets into specific ideas about eugenics more:

I'm trying to plan my life so I can give the best to Eugenics. Had it not been for Osborn Eugenics would be far advanced today. Too bad he had to wreck it to glorify himself. He was the last spoiled boy I ever had any business with-- and the last, for good, I hope.

[...] Who's going to be elected? I'm for the Republican Party but feel Stevenson is the better man. I don't believe any party should stay in office long as the democrats have been in.

Another letter from Whitney, this one typed and signed, dated June 15, 1954, mounted to the top margin of the dedication page. It begins "I hope you will change your mind and not cease putting out eugenics pamphlets." It ends with regards to eugenics, "I think it is the answer to the world's problems."

CC'd letter from Goethe to Lewis Terman dated 4-8-52 affixed to rear blank page. Goethe writes "Thank you for the reference to Justice Douglas' book. I know it-- in fact wrote him a letter of appreciation. Tremendously fascinating is your report of your progress as to 'factors influencing rate of reproduction in the gifted group.'" Further down the page Goethe reveals, "Perhaps I have not told you how as a side issue I am sending, as long as I can spare them, monthly checks to parents who feel a spiritual responsibility as carriers of superior genes." He belies that his pamphlets are encouraging biologically superior couples to have an extra third, fourth or fifth child.

CC'd letter from Goethe to Leon Whitney dated 3-19-49 mounted on rear endpaper. He notes the seemingly interminable decline of the American Eugenics Society. The letter that occasioned this response is mounted to the facing page, 2 pp. ALS from Whitney dated 3-14-49.

SIGNED LETTERS FROM ALBERT WIGGAM
& PSYCHOLOGIST LEWIS TERMAN

* Wiggam, Albert Edward. The New Decalogue of Science. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company Publishers, 1923. 303 pp. Original black cloth with red paper title labels. First edition, printing uncertain as copyright page as clipping pasted over it. Typical notes to terminals, crayon notes and underlining, and pasted-on clippings. Goethe wrote "our present civiliz. is making world safe for STUPIDITY" on paste down.

Mounted on ffep is TLS dated October 21, 1952 from Robert S. Cook, Director of Population Reference Bureau, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit, to Goethe. Cook thanks Goethe for his monthly checks of $150.00. Another message from Cook, a small handwritten note with with American Genetic Association stamp for a letterhead mounted on blank page at rear. Mounted above that is a TLS from Irving Burch of the Population Reference Bureau dated July 1, 1950.

TLS mounted on verso of ffep from the book's author, Wiggam, to Goethe dated October 5, 1992; another from Wiggam dated Novemeber 6, 1953 affixed to page facing title page. Note from the Business Secretary of The Eugenics Society to Goethe mounted on half-title.

Psychologist Lewis Terman sent Goethe a TLS affixed to the rear endpaper on Stanford University letterhead, dated November 12, 1952. He writes, "The Personality-Temperament Test which was taken by my gifted subjects in 1940 is actually intended as a test of aptitude for marital adjustment and the title as worded for camouflage purposes. That test, given a dozen years ago, has been about as predictive of later marital break-up as college aptitude tests are predictive of failure in college." Terman and Goethe's interests in genetics and gifted children overlapped.