Manuscript Notebook Containing Drafts of Letters and Addresses about Eugenics and Related Topics circa 1907-1908

octavo, 80 manuscript pages, written in ink and pencil, notebook bound in original brown cloth, materials dated 1907-1908.

The author signs his name, L. H. Bachelard, to several of his effusions about eugenics and its related racialist offshoots. Bachelard was presumably an American as the first item is a letter "to the Executive Secretary of the Committee of One Hundred, New Haven, Conn."

Bachelard offers here his own take on the scientifically discredited theory of Eugenics, the belief that humans can be improved through selective breeding of populations. Eugenics is among mankind's worst and most dangerous ideas – it caused enormous harm and pain during the 20th century. Beginning in the late 1800's leaders and intellectuals worldwide perpetrated and promulgated eugenic beliefs and policies based on common racist and xenophobic attitudes. Bachelard, writing at the beginning of the 20th century echoes most of them and applies them, in the writings on offer here, to the situation of America at the time. The immigrant, the uneducated, and similar "barbarians" all come in for Bachelard's censure. He goes on to argue that human reproduction must become "regulated", instead of "being promiscuous and at the hazard of our passions" – because "superior beings" had "enormous responsibilities" to "improve" the "race."