Abstract

"“A New Race of Businessmen”: Scientific Racism, Eugenical Assumptions, and Executive Potential, 1910-1925"

Karen Mahar, Siena College (KMAHAR@siena.edu)

This paper explores how scientific racism and eugenical assumptions about bodies informed the selection of men for executive positions in the early 20th century. It adds to the scholarship on managerial whiteness and masculinity (Kwolek-Folland, 1998, Davis, 2001, Roediger & Esch, 2012) by detailing how physical appearance was defined as scientific evidence of executive traits. The first published examination of executive aptitude (Gowin, 1915) concluded that the spectacularly efficient digestion of natural leaders gave them reserves of energy and executives were taller and heavier than the average American man. The most popular method to screen for executive potential was created by a traveling phrenologist who grafted racial types from Ripley’s Races of Europe (1899) onto her phrenological analysis of features to a create “The Blackford System.” Advertised as a swift and scientific way to match applicants to jobs based “blond” or “brunet” qualities, Blackford became a national sensation and was accepted as an expert in business and eugenics circles. Statistician Roger W. Babson, a vigorous supporter of Blackford, created the Babson Institute in 1919 (now Babson College) to train the sons of business founders into “a new race of businessmen.” The industrial psychologists who tested WWI recruits for “mental alertness” (IQ) and leadership potential established themselves as credentialed personnel experts after the war. They dismissed Blackford and Gowin as quacks, yet they continued to develop selection techniques that drew on scientific racism and eugenics.