While more that a dozen officers rotated between Texas ports of entry, only a few physicians were stationed in Michigan.
Before reading this article, I did not know about Port Huron. I thought the ports for immigration were only on the East and West coast (and obviously the North and Southern boarders).
The racial dimension of these differences in treatment become more striking when the relatively high number of Chinese immigrants rejected is taken into account. For example, although trachoma was typically associated with eastern and southern European immigrants during the first decade of the 20th century, at least one third of all Chinese debarred from entry into the United States were also certified with this diagnosis. Even more telling, however, is that of the approximately 60,000 Chinese who passed through Angel Island during this period, close to 10,000 were deported.
I definitely think health precautions are important when immigrants first arrive in a country. During the early 20th century, there were many diseases spreading within different parts of the world and even a pandemic in the late 1920's. However, there was no reason to over examinate and reject people with no reasoning.
In the 1910s, for example, public health officers diag- nosed higher numbers of cases of poor physique—a favorite “wastebasket” label of nativist groups such as the Immigration Restriction League—arguing that such debilitated individuals should not be allowed to become part of the body politic.”
This also demonstrates how public health officials would discriminate against immigrants coming in through Ellis Island. If there was only a few actual report cases of illness, why is there a need to examine "physique?"
Other conditions that USPHS officials searched immigrants for included feeble- mindedness, chronic psychopathic inferiority, insanity, hernias, rheumatism, malignancies, senility, varicose veins, blindness, and poor eyesight.
Since "feeblemindedness" is mentioned, it goes to shows even immigrants coming to America had to deal with the ideas of eugenics during the early 1900's.
With the promulgation of the Immigration Act of 1891 that mandated the exclusion of persons suffering from a “loathsome or danger- ous contagious disease” and, additionally, that required steamship companies to disinfect passengers before transit and bear the costs of possible deportation, a new era of inspection began. This and subsequent laws—which rearranged and expanded the criteria of exclusion—turned entry into the United States into a passage partially defined by a medical vocabulary of pathology and health. Moreover, as the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) began to play an impor- tant role at ports of entry throughout the country, the mediation of immigration through a new set of medical criteria became quite real for those migrating dur- ing this period.
This reminds me of some of the stories I've heard from Ellis Island where if people were deemed as "ill" they received an 'X' on the back of their clothes and had to stay for days until cleared.
One hen played a 5-note tune on a small piano, another performed a "tap dance" in cos tume and shoes, while a third "laid" wooden eggs from a nest box; the eggs rolled down a trough into a basket?the audience would call out any number of eggs desired, up to eight, and the hen would lay that number, non-stop.
So was the ABE's purpose of animal training mainly for the use of public entertainment and/or public entertainment companies?
s ABE expanded and be came more profitable, the Brelands attracted media attention and, perhaps more importantly, became scientist-practitioners in the field of animal training
After doing more research on the IQ Zoo, I now have a more of an understanding of how animals were used in certain fields. On the University of Akron website, Walt Disney had even visited the IQ Zoo to seek guidance on how to train animals for public shows. Although most uses are not as damaging to animals, we still have a long way to go to make these trainings more ethical.
he couple invested much time investigating the species-typical behavior of dogs, cats, pigs, goats, sheep, hamsters, parakeets, chickens, crows, and raccoons. Skinner had not had much success in training wild animals or even dogs using his operant technique. However, the Brelands began by cataloging the behavioral reper toires of different species because an animal must be able to produce a particular response in order for that response to be conditioned.
Usually when I think of Skinner, I think of is Operant Conditioning experiment where a rat was placed in a Skinner box and if the rat pulled the lever, it would be shocked. The experiment had demonstrated negative reinforcement
The pigeons in the homing system were trained to peck at a target on a screen. During training, the targets were cutouts of ships among other objects on a constantly moving field
I do think it is interesting they decided to use pigeons for the homing system. However, there could have been better systems made so that humans could use them. Sending animals to work within these systems is very unethical and putting animals under unnecessary stress.