nt. Its field comprises:
(1) Biology in so far as it concerns hereditary selection; (2)
Anthropology as related to race and marriage; (3) Politics, where it
bears on parenthood in relation to civic worth; (4) Ethics, in so far as
it promotes ideals that lead to the improvement of social quality; (5)
Religion, in so far as it strengthens and sanctifies eugenic duty.

In America the movement got an early start but developed slowly. The
first definite step was the formation of an Institute of Heredity in
Boston, shortly after 1880, by Loring Moody, who was assisted by the
poet Longfellow, Samuel E. Sewall, Mrs. Horace Mann, and other
well-known people. He proposed to work very much along the lines that
the Eugenics Record Office later adopted, but he was ahead of his time,
and his attempt seems to have come to nothing.

In 1883 Alexander Graham Bell, who may be considered the first
scientific worker in eugenics in the United States, published a paper on
the danger of the formation of a deaf variety of the human race in this
country, in which he gave the result of researches he had made at
Martha's Vineyard and other localities during preceding years, on the
pedigrees of congenitally deaf persons--deaf mutes, as they were then
called. He showed clearly that congenital deafness is largely due to
heredity, that it is much increased by consanguineous marriages, and
that it is of great importance to prevent the marriage of persons, in
both of whose families congenital deafness is present. About five years
later he founded the Volta Bureau in Washington, D. C., for the study of
deafness, and this has fostered a great deal of research work on this
particular phase of heredity.

In 1903 the American Breeders' Association was founded at St. Louis by
plant and animals breeders who desired to keep in touch with the new
subject of genetics, the science of breeding, which was rapidly coming
to have great practical importance. From the outset, the members
realized that the changes which they could produce in races of animals
and plants might also be produced in man, and the science of eugenics
was thus recognized on a sound biological basis. Soon a definite
eugenics section was formed, and as the importance of this section
increased, and it was realized that the name of Breeders' Association
was too narrowly construed by the public, the association changed its
name (1913) to the American Genetic Association, and the name of its
organ