[Ads-l] Antedating: kakogenics / cacogenics (1905)

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

The OED has an entry for "cacogenic/cacogenics" which attempted to
fill the same niche occupied by "dysgenic/dysgenics". Further below is
a 1905 antedating which used the alternate spelling "Kakogenics".

[Begin OED excerpt]
cacogenic, adj. The reverse of eugenic; = dysgenic adj.

1917   W. R. Inge in Edinb. Rev. Jan. 80   How will it escape the
cacogenic effects of family restriction in the better classes combined
with reckless multiplication among the refuse?

cacogenics n. (plural) the breeding of a weak race (opposed to eugenics).

1920   W. R. Inge in Daily Tel. 28 May 7/2   The new practice of
subsidising the unsuccessful by taxes extorted from the industrious
was cacogenics erected into a principle.
[End OED excerpt]

Year: 1905
Title: Sociological Papers
Publisher: Macmillan & Company, London
Article: Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope and Aims
Author: Francis Galton DCL Sc D FRS
Note: Read before the Sociological Society at a Meeting in the
School of Economics and Political Science (London University), on May 16th 1904
Section: Written Communications
>From Mr. J. M. Robertson
Start Page 72, Quote Page 73

[Begin excerpt]
It seems impossible, finally, to separate Eugenics from Politics,
inasmuch as the bad physical and moral conditions set up by
poverty--i.e., ill-feeding, ill-housing, ill-clothing, and early
prolificacy on the one hand, and ignorance in child-rearing and
begetting on the other--are the great forces of "Kakogenics."
[End excerpt]

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