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1. 1 2025-10-01T19:37:39+00:00 John Bell 95368f97d82dceffed8038b36e9c51da6c29afe3 Will Study Eugenics Transcript John Bell 1 Transcript of a newspaper clipping about Dr. Margaret V. Clark's trip abroad to study eugenics in Europe. plain 2025-10-01T19:37:39+00:00 John Bell 95368f97d82dceffed8038b36e9c51da6c29afe3

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• 1 2025-10-01T19:37:21+00:00 Margaret V. Clark and the “Importance of Parenthood” 8 plain 2026-08-19T11:45:05+00:00 In coverage about the “benefits” of better baby contests, Iowa newspapers often credited Margaret V. Clark as the woman who proposed using eugenic ideals to evaluate infants. In 1911, she spoke to a women’s club in Des Moines about this idea, arguing that “children should be scientifically ‘scored’ as well as horses, sheep, cattle, dogs, and various sorts of grain.”[1] As a result, the main feature of Better Baby Contests at the Iowa State Fair in August 1911 was the evaluation and scoring of infants by physicians and public health officials based on “scientific” standards for growth, appearance, and intelligence. Later that year, Clark traveled to Europe to learn more about eugenics, illustrating a wider network and reach for eugenicists beyond U.S. borders. Following her trip, she published several accounts of her experience and continued to bolster the use of eugenics in Iowa’s Better Baby Contests and public health programs. 
  
  The idea of wanting healthier babies is understandable. At face value, Better Baby Contests were a great way for parents to talk to medical professionals about their child’s health and receive advice and support if needed. However, it is important to keep in mind the underlying intent behind judging and evaluating infants for idealized qualities. Rather than pushing for improved social services or educational opportunities, one method Clark advocated for was preventing “unfit” individuals from marriage and procreation. In one address, she emphasized “‘How necessary it is that only health people mate for the protection of the race in order that the race may not deteriorate.’”[2] This is why the idea of “positive” eugenics through initiatives like Better Baby Contests can be so dangerous.
  
  One book Clark often recommended in her lectures, The Training of the Human Plant by Luther Burbank, highlighted the importance of marriage for eugenicists. As one chapter noted, 

  It would, if possible, be best absolutely to prohibit in every State in the Union the marriage of the physically, mentally and morally unfit. If we take a plant which we recognize as poisonous and cross it with another which is not poisonous and thus make the wholesome plant evil, so that it menaces all who come in contact with it, this is criminal enough. But suppose we blend together two poisonous plants and make a third even more virulent, a vegetable degenerate, and set their evil descendants adrift to multiply over the earth.[3] 

  This rhetoric, along with Clark’s own insistence and the work of other eugenicists, led to the proposal of a 1924 “Marriage Law” in Iowa, which required a physical examination of anyone who wanted to get married in the state. The Iowa legislature heavily debated the “eugenics clause” and what kind of examination would be required for those wishing to get married. Other states like North Carolina already had similar regulations in place. The bill “forbids issuance of license to wed ‘to any person who is an idiot or an imbecile, or who is under guardianship on account of being a person of unsound mind.’”[4]  These arbitrary labels were frequently used during this time in Iowa and elsewhere to restrict the reproductive freedom of people and dictate who had the “right” to be together and have children. Clark emphasized this point in one of her many addresses in 1914. As she argued, it was “necessary … that only healthy people mate for the protection of the race in order that the race may not deteriorate.”[5] The “race” that Clark saw as at risk for deterioration were wealthy Anglo Americans. Clark and other eugenicists like her used both marriage restrictions and Better Baby Contests as tools to maintain white supremacy.
   

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  [1] “To Rear Perfect Babies,” Kansas City Star, 9 December 1911.

  [2] “Women Speakers at the Grand,” Fargo Forum and Daily Republican, 23 March 1914.

  [3] Luther Burbank, The Training of the Human Plant (The Century Co., 1907), 58–59.

  [4] “Urges Provisions for Physical Test Before Marriage,” Evening Courier and Reporter, 24 January 1924.

  [5] “Women Speakers at the Grand,” Fargo Forum and Daily Republican, 23 March 1914.