Scientific Racism, Insurance, and Opposition to the Welfare State: Frederick L. Hoffman's Transatlantic Journey

Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

Volumn 2, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 150-190

  Hoffman, Beatrix ^a  

^a NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 84898553821     PISSN: 15377814     EISSN: 19433557     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S1537781400002450     Document Type: Article

References (218)

1. Frederick L. Hoffman to Forrest F. Dryden, December 16, 1918, Box 6, Papers of Frederick Hoffman, Rare Book Room, Columbia University (hereafter Hoffman Papers).
2. Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, MA, 1998).
3. On the role of “whiteness” in immigrant identity, see, for example, Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA, 1998)
4. Matthew Pratt Guterl, The Color of Race in America, 1900–1940 (Cambridge, MA, 2001).
5. Francis J. Sypher, “Frederick Ludwig Hoffman,” American National Biography, vol. 10 (New York, 1999), 940–42;
6. John Cassedy, “Frederick Ludwig Hoffman,” Dictionary of American Biography, Supp. 4 (New York, 1974), 384–85;
7. David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, Deadly Dust: Silicosis and the Politics of Occupational Disease in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton, 1991), 25–26;
8. Alan Derickson, Black Lung: Anatomy of a Public Health Disaster (Ithaca, 1998), 62–69;
9. James T. Patterson, The Dread Disease: Cancer and Modern American Culture (Cambridge, MA, 1987)
10. S. Adolphus Knopf, A History of the National Tuberculosis Association: The Anti-Tuberculosis Movement in the United States (New York, 1922);
11. Francis J. Sypher, “The Rediscovered Prophet: Frederick L. Hoffman,” Journal of the Cosmos Club (2000), http://www.cosmos-club.org/journals/2000/sypher.html
12. See also Francis J. Sypher, ed., Frederick L. Hoffman: His Life and Works (Philadelphia, 2003).
13. Dorothy Ross, The Origins of American Social Science (Cambridge, UK, 1991), 59–60;
14. Theodore M. Porter, The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820–1900 (Princeton, 1986)
15. John M. Eyler, Victorian Social Medicine: The Ideas and Methods of William Farr (Baltimore, 1979), 18–19.
16. On Progressives' use of social statistics, see Alice O'Connor, Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History (Princeton, 2000).
17. Cassedy, “Frederick Ludwig Hoffman,” 384;
18. Frederick L. Hoffman, “The Life Story of a Statistician” (ca. 1919), 15–16, Box 9;
19. Ella Hoffman Rigney, “Frederick L. Hoffman” (unpublished biography by Hoffman's daughter), vii, 6–8, Box 31, Hoffman Papers.
20. Hoffman, “The Life Story of a Statistician,” 20,16
21. Rigney, “Frederick L. Hoffman,” 10.
22. This experience may have inspired one of Hoffman's later statistical studies; see Frederick L. Hoffman, Army Anthropometry and Medical Rejection Statistics (Newark, 1918).
23. Rigney, “Frederick L. Hoffman,” 11, 13
24. Sypher, “The Rediscovered Prophet.”
25. Hoffman, “The Life Story of a Statistician,” 26–27.
26. “The Life Story of a Statistician,” 3,4,9,14.
27. On American social scientists and German universities, see Ross, Origins of American Social Science
28. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings, 84–89
29. Antoinette Hoffman to Frederick Hoffman, February, 1891, translation by Rigney, Box 22, Hoffman Papers.
30. Hoffman, “The Life Story of a Statistician,” 45–46.
31. Hoffman to Forrest F. Dryden, May 8, 1919, Box 6.
32. On German immigrant communities, see Kathleen Neils Conzen, “German-Americans and the Invention of Ethnicity,” in America and the Germans: An Assessment of a Three Hundred Year History, vol. I, eds., Frank Trommler and Joseph McVeigh (Philadelphia, 1985), 131–45;
33. Kathleen Neils Conzen, Immigrant Milwaukee, 1836–1860: Accommodation and Community in a Frontier City (Cambridge, MA, 1976).
34. Hoffman, “The Life Story of a Statistician,” 23–43.
35. “The Life Story of a Statistician,” 2, 66–72.
36. “The Life Story of a Statistician,” 72, 87.
37. Frederick L. Hoffman, Verses of a Wanderer (1921), 57–58, Box 13, Hoffman Papers. Hoffman collected and bound his own poetry in two volumes, Verses of a Wanderer and New Verses of a Wanderer. He mused that his poems would be unacceptable to a literary establishment enamored of “such drivel as is honored in a prize contest and with a substantial money prize by “The Nation,’” which ”could only meet with the approval of neurotic perverts, holding a midway place between the cubists in art and the jazz band in music…the former is a smear of paint and the latter inharmonious noise.”
38. It was left to men like Hoffman to appreciate and emulate the “true poetry of Tom Moore, Longfellow, Sidney Lanier, and George Service.” Preface, Verses of a Wanderer, 3–4.
39. Eugene R. Corson, “The Future of the Colored Race in the United States from an Ethnic and Medical Standpoint,” New York Medical Times 15 (1887): 200
40. quoted in John S. Haller, “Race, Mortality, and Life Insurance: Negro Vital Statistics in the Late Nineteenth Century,” Journal of the History of Medicine (July 1970): 256;
41. Hoffman, “The Life Story of a Statistician,” 106.
42. Cassedy, “Frederick Ludwig Hoffman,” 384;
43. Hoffman, “The Life Story of a Statistician,” 113–16, 107.
44. Rigney, “Frederick L. Hoffman,” 66, 85. Ella Hoffman's activities in the UDC are documented in Box 34, Series 2, Hoffman Papers.
45. Sypher, “The Rediscovered Prophet,” 4;
46. Rigney, “Frederick L. Hoffman,” 91–92.
47. On Samuel Armstrong, see David Levering Lewis, W.E.B. DuBois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 (New York, 1993), 124.
48. DuBois referred to Hampton as “an institution where the President of the United States can with applause tell young men not to hitch their wagons to a star but to hitch them to mules” (W.E.B. DuBois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919, 353).
49. Frederick L. Hoffman, “Vital Statistics of the Negro,” Arena (April 1892).
50. On theories of black medical inferiority during slavery, see Nancy Krieger, “Shades of Difference: Theoretical Underpinnings of the Medical Controversy on Black/White Differences in the United States, 1830–1879,” International Journal of Health Services 17 (1987): 259–78;
51. James Jones, Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (New York, 1981,1993), 17–19.
52. Haller, “Race, Mortality, and Life Insurance,” 257.
53. The American Economic Association, which was founded by Social Gospel economist Richard T. Ely in 1885 and originally espoused “positive assistance” by the state, may seem like an odd publisher for Hoffman's work, but by 1896 the organization was dominated by conservative advocates of laissez-faire; Bradley W. Bateman and Ethan B. Kapstein, “Between God and the Market: The Religious Roots of the American Economic Association,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 13 (Fall 1999): 249–258.
54. See also Mary O. Furner, Advocacy and Objectivity: A Crisis in the Professionalization of American Social Science, 1865–1905 (Lexington, KY, 1975).
55. George Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817–1914 (New York, 1971), 249.
56. Frederick L. Hoffman, Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro (New York, 1896), 39, 42.
57. For example, see J.T. Walton, “The Comparative Mortality of the White and Colored Races in the South,” Charlotte Medical Journal 10 (1897): 291–94;
58. Theophilus O. Powell, “The Increase of Insanity and Tuberculosis in the Southern Negro since 1860,” Journal of the American Medical Association 27 (December 5, 1896): 1185–1188;
59. Seale Harris, “Tuberculosis in the Negro,” Journal of the American Medical Association 41 (October 3, 1903): 834–838.
60. Haller, “Race, Mortality, and Life Insurance,” describes other examples of this genre.
61. On the health conditions of slaves, see Todd Savitt, Medicine and Slavery: The Diseases and Health Care of Blacks in Antebellum Virginia (Urbana, 2002)
62. Sharla Fett, Working Cures: Healing, Health, and Power on Southern Slave Plantations (Chapel Hill, 2002).
63. Hoffman, Race Traits and Tendencies, 37, 328, 55, 311, 146, 172, 175, 37.
64. Race Traits and Tendencies., 326, 85, 312.
65. Race Traits and Tendencies., 265, 247, 228, 231, 259.
66. Race Traits and Tendencies., 214, 217, 242–43, 312.
67. Race Traits and Tendencies., 327.
68. Also quoted in John S. Haller, Jr., Outcasts from Evolution: Scientific Attitudes of Racial Inferiority, 1859–1900 (Urbana, 1971).
69. Hoffman, Race Traits and Tendencies, 328.
70. Haller, “Race, Mortality, and Life Insurance,” 259.
71. Hoffman, Race Traits and Tendencies, 310, v.
72. Herbert Aptheker, ed., Book Reviews by W.E.B. DuBois (Millwood, NY, 1977), 117;
73. DuBois quoted in Kelly Miller, A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro, Occasional Papers, No. 1 (Washington, DC, 1897), 6;
74. W.E.B. DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (New York, 1899, reprint 1967), 147–163.
75. Miller echoed the widely-disseminated criticism that the 1890 census had undercounted the population. Margo J. Anderson, The American Census: A Social History (New Haven, 1988), 106–108.
76. Miller, Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies, 3, 10, 11, 36.
77. On Kelly Miller, see Carter G. Woodson, “Kelly Miller,” Journal of Negro History (January 1940): 137–38;
78. August Meier, “The Racial and Educational Philosophy of Kelly Miller, 1895–1915,” Journal of Negro Education (July 1960): 121–127.
79. The Southern Workman and Hampton School Record, December, 1894, October, 1896, June, 1897, and September, 1897. Clippings in Hoffman Papers, Box 29.
80. New Orleans Picayune, September 6, 1896;
81. San Francisco Chronicle, October 4, 1896;
82. quoted in Rigney, “Frederick L. Hoffman,” 122.
83. Rudolph Matas, M.D., “Tribute to Dr. F.L. Hoffmann,” unidentified clipping, ca. 1913, Box 20, Hoffman Papers.
84. Rigney, “Frederick L. Hoffman,” 230.
85. George Fredrickson suggests that Hoffman cultivated his scientific racism in order to gain acceptance in the insurance industry; Black Image in the White Mind, 251–52. I have not found specific evidence to support his contention, although this was certainly one result.
86. On the history of life insurance, see Morton Keller, The Life Insurance Enterprise, 1885–1910: A Study in the Limits of Corporate Power (Cambridge, MA, 1963)
87. Viviana A. Zelizer, Morals and Markets: The Development of Life Insurance in the United States (New York, 1979).
88. The Metropolitan Life also instituted similar policies in 1881; Haller, “Race, Mortality, and Life Insurance,” 247. Metropolitan, however, did not discriminate against black policyholders in its visiting nurse service. Its statistician, Louis I. Dublin, later spearheaded changes in the company's racial policies and argued for equality in insurance provision
89. see, for example, Dublin, “The Reduction in Mortality Among Colored Policyholders,” address delivered before the Annual Convention of the National Urban League, 1920, Louis I. Dublin Papers, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD
90. Hoffman detested MefLife for its social-mindedness, and held special contempt for its statistician Lee Frankel; he saw the company's visiting nurse service as “perilously near to an advertisement” and condemned Frankel as “a social reformer, and not an insurance man.” Hoffman to Dryden, October 31, 1916 and December 12, 1916, Box 5, Hoffman Papers. On MetLife's public health activities, see Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings, 262;
91. Karen Buhler-Wilkerson, No Place Like Home: A History of Nursing and Home Care in the United States (Baltimore, 2001), ch. 7.
92. Frederick L. Hoffman, History of the Prudential Insurance Company of America, (Newark, NJ, 1900), 209–210.
93. History of the Prudential Insurance Company of America., 137.
94. Hoffman, History of the Prudential, 139. The claim that blacks did not value insurance was unsubstantiated. Historians have documented the central importance of burial insurance to working-class and poor African American families
95. see, for example, David Beito, From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890–1967 (Chapel Hill, 2000)
96. Merah Steven Stuart, An Economic Detour: A History of Insurance in the Lives of American Negroes (College Park, MD, 1940; reprint 1969)
97. Robert C. Puth, Supreme Life: The History of a Negro Life Insurance Company (New York, 1970)
98. Robert E. Weems, Jr., Black Business in the Black Metropolis: The Chicago Metropolitan Assurance Company, 1925–1985 (Bloomington, IN, 1996).
99. Hoffman, History of the Prudential, 208–211.
100. History of the Prudential., 153.
101. On insurance regulation, see Keller, The Life Insurance Enterprise, ch. 1.
102. Hoffman, History of the Prudential, 185.
103. On the proliferation of African American insurance companies, see Stuart, An Economic Detour
104. Puth, Supreme Life
105. Weems, Black Business in the Black Metropolis
106. Hoffman, History of the Prudential, 207.
107. Deborah Stone, “The Struggle for the Soul of Health Insurance,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law 18 (Summer 1993): 287–317.
108. “Annual Report of the Statisticians' Department for 1907,” Box 1, Hoffman Papers
109. Hoffman, “The Jewish Demography,” The American Hebrew, March 22,1922;
110. “Annual Report of the Statisticians' Department for 1910,” Box 1.
111. Hoffman to John K. Gore, June 3, 1915, Box 5, Hoffman Papers.
112. Rogers M. Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (New Haven, 1997), 429–439.
113. Hoffman to Leslie Ward, April 25,1908, Box 1, Hoffman Papers.
114. See also Hoffman, “Race Amalgamation in Hawaii,” Eugenics in Race and State, vol. II (1923).
115. Hoffman to Ward, October 12, 1908.
116. Hoffman to Forrest F. Dryden, March 29, 1911, Box 2, Hoffman Papers.
117. Hoffman Papers, January 9, 1912 and January 5, 1912, Box 2. Other insurance experts at the time agreed that the difficulty of examination and a higher “moral hazard” made women riskier to insure. However, unlike Prudential, in the 1910s the Metropolitan Life and the New York Life Insurance Company decided to meet this problem by soliciting increasing numbers of women policyholders to see if their overall risk would drop, with positive results.
118. These two companies also argued that the growing participation of women in the workforce improved women's health by increasing their “vigor and independence.” T.A. Phillips, “Insurance of Women,” Medical Insurance and Health Conservation 27 (October 1916): 11–20. Official gender discrimination in insurance was banned by the Economic Equity Act of 1983.
119. Hoffman to Forrest F. Dryden, December 12, 1916, Box 5, Hoffman Papers.
120. Christopher Sellers, Hazards of the Job: From Industrial Disease to Environmental Health Science (Chapel Hill, 1997), 60;
121. Hoffman to Ward, May 16, 1908, Box 1, Hoffman Papers
122. Derickson, Black Lung, 67–68
123. Hoffman to Dryden, Jan 11, 1919, Box 6, Hoffman Papers; “Life Story,” 27.
124. Hoffman to Leslie D. Ward, December 16, 1908, Box 1, Hoffman Papers.
125. See Sypher, ed., Frederick L. Hoffman
126. Patterson, The Dread Disease
127. Cassedy, “Frederick Ludwig Hoffman”
128. Sypher, “The Rediscovered Prophet.”
129. John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, NJ, 1988), 197–208
130. Richard O'Connor, The German-Americans: An Informal History (Boston, 1968), 383–384.
131. Higham, Strangers in the Land, 201–02, 218.
132. Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color, 6–48.
133. Phyllis Keller, States of Belonging: German-American Intellectuals and the First World War (Cambridge, MA, 1979), 260;
134. Higham, Strangers in the Land, 198.
135. See also Gary Gerstle, “Liberty, Coercion and the Making of Americans,” Journal of American History 84 (September 1997): 328
136. Conzen, “German-Americans and the Invention of Ethnicity.”
137. Frederick L. Hoffman, “Autocracy and Paternalism vs. Democracy and Liberty,” address delivered at the annual meeting of International Association of Casualty and Surety Underwriters, New York City, December 4, 1918, Box 13, Hoffman Papers.
138. Hoffman Papers, 4.
139. Frederick L. Hoffman, “On the Duty of Americans of German Birth,” Economic World, April 7, 1917.
140. Rigney, “Frederick L. Hoffman,” 236.
141. “Frederick L. Hoffman,” 232. The Friends of German Democracy was headed by the son of former Civil War General Franz Sigel
142. Keller, States of Belonging, 235–36. For an example of an FGD propaganda leaflet, see WW I Document Archive http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/ 1915/propleaf.html
143. Hoffman, “Autocracy and Paternalism,” 1.
144. Hoffman, “New Verses of a Wanderer,” 1923, Box 13;
145. Beatrix Hoffman, The Wages of Sickness: The Politics of Health Insurance in Progressive America (Chapel Hill, 2001), 60–64.
146. Hoffman, “Autocracy and Paternalism,” 5, 11
147. “Autocracy and Paternalism,” 11.
148. On the AALL, see B. Hoffman, Wages of Sickness
149. David Moss, Socializing Security: Progressive-Era Economists and the Origins of American Social Policy (Cambridge, MA, 1996)
150. On the Progressive-era campaign for health insurance, see Ronald Numbers, Almost Persuaded: American Physicians and Compulsory Health Insurance, 1912–1920 (Baltimore, 1978)
151. Michael Bennett, “The Movement for Compulsory Health Insurance in Illinois, 1912–1920,” Illinois Historical Journal 89 (Winter 1996): 233–46;
152. B. Hoffman, Wages of Sickness
153. Arthur J. Viseltear, “Compulsory Health Insurance in California, 1915–18,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 24 (1969): 151–182.
154. Roy Lubove, The Struggle for Social Security (Cambridge, MA, 1968), 83;
155. Gompers, “Labor vs. its Barnacles,” American Federationist (April 1916): 269. While Gompers and the AFL went on record against compulsory health insurance, some local trade unions and federations were among the legislation's strongest supporters, especially in New York State
156. B. Hoffman, Wages of Sickness, ch. 6.
157. Numbers, Almost Persuaded, 18.
158. Rigney, “Frederick L. Hoffman,” iv
159. Hoffman to John Dryden, February 28,1906, Box 1;
160. “Prudential Owns a Part of Gibraltar,” The Sunday Call (Newark, NJ), November 10, 1901, clipping in Box 12, Hoffman Papers.
161. Hiram J. Messenger, “The Rate of Sickness” (1917), New York Public Library Insurance Pamphlet Collection
162. Insurance Federation of New York, “To our New York Agents,” January 27,1916, Reel 16, Papers of the American Association for Labor Legislation (hereafter AALL Papers), microform edition (University Microfilms International, 1977)
163. R.P. Shorts to John B. Andrews, January 27, 1916, Reel 16, AALL Papers
164. Hoffman to Forrest F. Dryden, January 5, 1917, Box 5, Hoffman Papers
165. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings, 263–264
166. B. Hoffman, Wages of Sickness, 106–107.
167. Keller, The Life Insurance Enterprise
168. H. Roger Grant, Insurance Reform: Consumer Action in the Progressive Era (Ames, IA, 1979), 23, 41–42
169. William H.A. Carr, “From Three Cents a Week…” The Story of the Prudential Insurance Company of America (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1975), 44–57.
170. Numbers, Almost Persuaded, 22.
171. John R. Commons, “Health Insurance,” Wisconsin Medical Journal 17 (1918): 222;
172. quoted in Numbers, Almost Persuaded, 78.
173. Frederick Hoffman, “Facts and Fallacies of Compulsory Health Insurance” (Newark, NJ, 1917): 46, 58, 59, 50.
174. “Facts and Fallacies of Compulsory Health Insurance”, 86,11,7.
175. “Facts and Fallacies of Compulsory Health Insurance”, 81.
176. “Facts and Fallacies of Compulsory Health Insurance”, 67, 82.
177. Hoffman to Dryden, December 12, 1916, Hoffman Papers
178. B. Hoffman, Wages of Sickness, 113.
179. Report on European trip by Gertrude Beeks Easley, June 30, 1919, Box 70, Papers of the National Civic Federation, Rare Book Room, New York Public Library (hereafter NCF Papers).
180. Alfred Cox, “Seven Years of National Health Insurance in England: A Retrospect,” Journal of the American Medical Association 76 (1921): 1313–1314;
181. Bentley B. Gilbert, The Evolution of National Insurance in Great Britain: The Origins of the Welfare State (London, 1966), 400–416.
182. See also Derek Fraser, The Evolution of the British Welfare State: A History of Social Policy since the Industrial Revolution (London, 1973).
183. Actually, the incomes of most British general practitioners rose considerably after the introduction of the National Insurance Act since they were now paid for treating poor patients. In five British towns studied by the AALL, “it is estimated that the act has brought an average annual addition of $750 to $ 1,000.” “Health Insurance: A Positive Statement in Answer to Opponents,” American Labor Legislation Review 7 (December 1917): 671.
184. See also Gilbert, Evolution of National Insurance.
185. Hoffman to Dryden, October 7 and October 20, 1919, Box 7, Hoffman Papers. Hoffman's Prudential Press publications resulting from his British visit included National Health Insurance and the Friendly Societies (1920), Poor Law Aspects of National Health Insurance (1920), and Address on the Methods and Results of National Health Insurance in Great Britain (n.d.).
186. Interviews with British physicians, December 1, 1919, Reel 63, AALL Papers.
187. “An American View of the National Insurance Scheme,” The British Medical Journal (September 18, 1920): 444.
188. Irving Fisher to Frederick Hoffman, December 19, 1916, Reel 17, AALL Papers.
189. Also quoted in Numbers, Almost Persuaded, 61
190. William Green to John B. Andrews, March 12, 1918, Reel 18, AALL Papers. Green, in defiance of Samuel Gompers, was a major supporter of compulsory health insurance.
191. Hoffman to Dryden, October 20,1920, Box 8;
192. B. Hoffman, Wages of Sickness, 109–110.
193. For a summary of the state commission reports, see Numbers, Almost Persuaded, 99.
194. On the role of the insurance industry in the defeat of health insurance in California and New York, see Viseltear, “Compulsory Health Insurance in California”; B. Hoffman, Wages of Sickness. In California, fraternal societies and Christian Scientists also played a major role.
195. Colin Gordon, Dead on Arrival: Health Care and the Limits of Social Provision in the United States (Princeton, forthcoming).
196. Haller, “Race, Mortality, and Life Insurance,” 260–61;
197. Scot J. Paltrow, “Old Notion of Black Mortality Influenced Insurers,” The Wall Street Journal, December 26, 2000.
198. On MetLife discrimination, see Paltrow, “Uncovered Losses: Life Insurers' Race Bias in Decades Past Affects Policyholders Even Now,” The Wall Street Journal, December 26, 2000.
199. On the rise of new racial ideologies in the 1920s, see Peggy Pascoe, “Miscegenation Law, Court Cases, and Ideologies of ‘Race’ in Twentieth-Century America,” Journal of American History 83 (June 1996): 44–69;
200. Mae M. Ngai, “The Architecture of Race in American Immigration Law: A Reexamination of the Immigration Act of 1924,” Journal of American History 86 (June 1999): 67–92
201. Haller, Outcasts from Evolution
202. Fredrickson, Black Image in the White Mind.
203. Scot J. Paltrow, “Past Due: In Relic of ‘50s and ’60s, Blacks Still Pay More For a Type of Insurance,” Wall Street Journal, April 27, 2000;
204. Paltrow, “Old Notion of Black Mortality.”
205. Stone, “The Struggle for the Soul of Health Insurance,” 299.
206. “Cherry-picking” attempts to insure only the healthiest individuals or groups. On medical underwriting and preexisting conditions, see Stone, “The Struggle for the Soul of Health Insurance.” Residential discrimination in property insurance, also known as “redlining,” attracted national attention during the 1993 Los Angeles riots, “when California regulators discovered that nearly half the homes and businesses damaged in the riots in south Los Angeles were not insured.” Nonwhites and the poor are still perceived as poor risks by insurers; investigations by insurance regulators have unearthed examples such as a Wisconsin insurance supervisor who, in the mid-1990s, allegedly told an agent to “quit writing all those blacks.” “Writing Policies in Cities Once Written Off,” New York Times, October 30, 1996
207. Eugenical News 9 (July 1924): 67. Thanks to Barry Mehler for this reference.
208. Rigney, “Frederick L. Hoffman,” 125–126
209. F.L. Hoffman, “The Problem of Negro-White Intermixture and Intermarriage,” Eugenics in Race and State, vol. II (1923), 187.
210. Hoffman, “Race Pathology in Hawaii,” Address delivered before the Honolulu County Medical Society, August, 1929;
211. Present Day Trends of the Negro Population,” Opportunity (November 1931): 332–36. In this article Hoffman expressed concern that urban life was pushing blacks to embrace communism; he had recently observed a “Negro mass meeting” in Chicago “where some three thousand were assembled in the open air listening to communistic speeches of extreme violence.”
212. The Economic World, April 7, 1917;
213. Prudential Home News, November, 1919
214. quoted in Rigney, “Frederick L. Hoffman.”
215. Hoffman to Ella Hoffman, November 16,1927, Box 23, Hoffman Papers
216. Sypher, “The Rediscovered Prophet”
217. Cassedy, “Frederick Ludwig Hoffman,” 385
218. Rigney, “Frederick L. Hoffman,” 420.