¹ The author wishes to thank Francis J. Sypher, Mae M. Ngai, Elaine Spencer, members of the Newberry Library Fellows Seminar, Maureen Flanagan, Dana Yarak, and several anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. Frederick L. Hoffman is no relation to the author.

² Frederick L. Hoffman to Forrest F. Dryden, December 16, 1918, Box 6, Papers of Frederick Hoffman, Rare Book Room, Columbia University (hereafter Hoffman Papers).

³ Rodgers, Daniel T., Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, MA, 1998).Google Scholar

⁴ On the role of “whiteness” in immigrant identity, see, for example, Jacobson, Matthew Frye, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA, 1998)Google Scholar; Guterl, Matthew Pratt, The Color of Race in America, 1900–1940 (Cambridge, MA, 2001).Google Scholar

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⁸ Hoffman, , “The Life Story of a Statistician,” 20, 16Google Scholar; Rigney, , “Frederick L. Hoffman,” 10.Google Scholar

⁹ This experience may have inspired one of Hoffman's later statistical studies; see Hoffman, Frederick L., Army Anthropometry and Medical Rejection Statistics (Newark, 1918).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Rigney, , “Frederick L. Hoffman,” 11, 13Google Scholar; Sypher, “The Rediscovered Prophet.”

¹¹ Hoffman, , “The Life Story of a Statistician,” 26–27.Google Scholar

¹² Ibid., 3,4, 9, 14. On American social scientists and German universities, see Ross, Origins of American Social Science; Rodgers, , Atlantic Crossings, 84–89.Google Scholar

¹³ Antoinette Hoffman to Frederick Hoffman, February, 1891, translation by Rigney, Box 22, Hoffman Papers.

¹⁴ Hoffman, , “The Life Story of a Statistician,” 45–46.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Hoffman to Forrest F. Dryden, May 8, 1919, Box 6. On German immigrant communities, see Conzen, Kathleen Neils, “German-Americans and the Invention of Ethnicity,” in America and the Germans: An Assessment of a Three Hundred Year History, vol. I, eds., Trommler, Frank and McVeigh, Joseph (Philadelphia, 1985), 131–45Google Scholar; Conzen, Kathleen Neils, Immigrant Milwaukee, 1836–1860: Accommodation and Community in a Frontier City (Cambridge, MA, 1976).Google Scholar

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¹⁷ Ibid., 2, 66–72.

¹⁸ Ibid., 72, 87.

¹⁹ Hoffman, Frederick L., Verses of a Wanderer (1921), 57–58Google Scholar, 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.” 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.

²⁰ Corson, Eugene R., “The Future of the Colored Race in the United States from an Ethnic and Medical Standpoint,” New York Medical Times 15 (1887): 200Google Scholar, quoted in Haller, John S., “Race, Mortality, and Life Insurance: Negro Vital Statistics in the Late Nineteenth Century,” Journal of the History of Medicine (July 1970): 256Google ScholarPubMed; Hoffman, , “The Life Story of a Statistician,” 106.Google Scholar

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²³ Sypher, , “The Rediscovered Prophet,” 4Google Scholar; Rigney, , “Frederick L. Hoffman,” 91–92.Google Scholar On Samuel Armstrong, see Lewis, David Levering, W.E.B. DuBois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 (New York, 1993), 124.Google Scholar 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” (ibid., 353).

²⁴ Hoffman, Frederick L., “Vital Statistics of the Negro,” Arena (April 1892).Google Scholar

²⁵ On theories of black medical inferiority during slavery, see Krieger, Nancy, “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): 259–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones, James, Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (New York, 1981, 1993), 17–19.Google Scholar

²⁶ Haller, , “Race, Mortality, and Life Insurance,” 257.Google Scholar

²⁷ 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 Kapstein, Ethan B., “Between God and the Market: The Religious Roots of the American Economic Association,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 13 (Fall 1999): 249–58.Google Scholar See also Furner, Mary O., Advocacy and Objectivity: A Crisis in the Professionalization of American Social Science, 1865–1905 (Lexington, KY, 1975).Google Scholar

²⁸ Fredrickson, George, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817–1914 (New York, 1971), 249.Google Scholar

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³⁰ For example, see Walton, J.T., “The Comparative Mortality of the White and Colored Races in the South,” Charlotte Medical Journal 10 (1897): 291–94Google Scholar; Powell, Theophilus O., “The Increase of Insanity and Tuberculosis in the Southern Negro since 1860,” Journal of the American Medical Association 27 (December 5, 1896): 1185–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harris, Seale, “Tuberculosis in the Negro,” Journal of the American Medical Association 41 (October 3, 1903): 834–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Haller, “Race, Mortality, and Life Insurance,” describes other examples of this genre.

On the health conditions of slaves, see Savitt, Todd, Medicine and Slavery: The Diseases and Health Care of Blacks in Antebellum Virginia (Urbana, 2002)Google Scholar; Fett, Sharia, Working Cures: Healing, Health, and Power on Southern Slave Plantations (Chapel Hill, 2002).Google Scholar

³¹ Hoffman, , Race Traits and Tendencies, 37Google Scholar, 328, 55, 311, 146, 172, 175, 37.

³² Ibid., 326, 85, 312.

³³ Ibid., 265, 247, 228, 231, 259.

³⁴ Ibid., 214, 217, 242–43, 312.

³⁵ Ibid., 327. Also quoted in Haller, John S. Jr, Outcasts from Evolution: Scientific Attitudes of Racial Inferiority, 1859–1900 (Urbana, 1971).Google Scholar

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³⁸ Hoffman, , Race Traits and Tendencies, 310, v.Google Scholar

³⁹ Aptheker, Herbert, ed., Book Reviews by W.E.B. DuBois (Millwood, NY, 1977), 117Google Scholar; DuBois quoted in Miller, Kelly, A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro, Occasional Papers, No. 1 (Washington, DC, 1897), 6Google Scholar; DuBois, W.E.B., The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (New York, 1899, reprint 1967), 147–63.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Miller echoed the widely-disseminated criticism that the 1890 census had undercounted the population. Anderson, Margo J., The American Census: A Social History (New Haven, 1988), 106–08.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Miller, , Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies, 3Google Scholar, 10, 11, 36. On Kelly Miller, see Woodson, Carter G., “Kelly Miller,” Journal of Negro History (January 1940): 137–38Google Scholar; Meier, August, “The Racial and Educational Philosophy of Kelly Miller, 1895–1915,” Journal of Negro Education (July 1960): 121–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴² The Southern Workman and Hampton School Record, December, 1894, October, 1896, June, 1897, and September, 1897. Clippings in Hoffman Papers, Box 29.

⁴³ New Orleans Picayune, September 6, 1896; San Francisco Chronicle, October 4, 1896; quoted in Rigney, , “Frederick L. Hoffman,” 122.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Rudolph Matas, M.D., “Tribute to Dr. F.L. Hoffmann,” unidentified clipping, ca. 1913, Box 20, Hoffman Papers.

⁴⁵ Rigney, , “Frederick L. Hoffman,” 230.Google Scholar 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.

⁴⁶ On the history of life insurance, see Keller, Morton, The Life Insurance Enterprise, 1885–1910: A Study in the Limits of Corporate Power (Cambridge, MA, 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zelizer, Viviana A., Morals and Markets: The Development of Life Insurance in the United States (New York, 1979).Google Scholar

⁴⁷ The Metropolitan Life also instituted similar policies in 1881; Haller, , “Race, Mortality, and Life Insurance,” 247.Google Scholar 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; 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.

Hoffman detested MetLife 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, 262Google Scholar; Buhler-Wilkerson, Karen, No Place Like Home: A History of Nursing and Home Care in the United States (Baltimore, 2001)Google Scholar, ch. 7.

⁴⁸ Hoffman, Frederick L., History of the Prudential Insurance Company of America, (Newark, NJ, 1900), 209–10.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Ibid., 137.

⁵⁰ Hoffman, , History of the Prudential, 139.Google Scholar 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; see, for example, Beito, David, From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890–1967 (Chapel Hill, 2000)Google Scholar; Stuart, Merah Steven, An Economic Detour: A History of Insurance in the Lives of American Negroes (College Park, MD, 1940; reprint 1969)Google Scholar; Puth, Robert C., Supreme Life: The History of a Negro Life Insurance Company (New York, 1970)Google Scholar; Weems, Robert E. Jr, Black Business in the Black Metropolis: The Chicago Metropolitan Assurance Company, 1925–1985 (Bloomington, IN, 1996).Google Scholar

⁵¹ Hoffman, , History of the Prudential, 208–11.Google Scholar

⁵² Ibid., 153.

⁵³ On insurance regulation, see Keller, The Life Insurance Enterprise, ch. 1.

⁵⁴ Hoffman, , History of the Prudential, 185.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ On the proliferation of African American insurance companies, see Stuart, An Economic Detour; Puth, Supreme Life; Weems, Black Business in the Black Metropolis.

⁵⁶ Hoffman, , History of the Prudential, 207.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Stone, Deborah, “The Straggle for the Soul of Health Insurance,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law 18 (Summer 1993): 287–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁸ Annual Report of the Statisticians' Department for 1907,” Box 1, Hoffman Papers; Hoffman, “The Jewish Demography,” The American Hebrew, March 22, 1922; “Annual Report of the Statisticians' Department for 1910,” Box 1.

⁵⁹ Hoffman to John K. Gore, June 3, 1915, Box 5, Hoffman Papers.

⁶⁰ Smith, Rogers M., Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (New Haven, 1997), 429–39.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Hoffman to Leslie Ward, April 25, 1908, Box 1, Hoffman Papers. See also Hoffman, , “Race Amalgamation in Hawaii,” Eugenics in Race and State, vol. II (1923).Google Scholar

⁶² Hoffman to Ward, October 12, 1908.

⁶³ Hoffman to Forrest F. Dryden, March 29, 1911, Box 2, Hoffman Papers.

⁶⁴ Ibid., 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. These two companies also argued that the growing participation of women in the workforce improved women's health by increasing their “vigor and independence.” Phillips, T.A., “Insurance of Women,” Medical Insurance and Health Conservation 27 (October 1916): 11–20.Google Scholar Official gender discrimination in insurance was banned by the Economic Equity Act of 1983.

⁶⁵ Hoffman to Forrest F. Dryden, December 12, 1916, Box 5, Hoffman Papers.

⁶⁶ Sellers, Christopher, Hazards of the Job: From Industrial Disease to Environmental Health Science (Chapel Hill, 1997), 60Google Scholar; Hoffman to Ward, May 16, 1908, Box 1, Hoffman Papers; Derickson, , Black Lung, 67–68Google Scholar; Hoffman to Dryden, Jan 11, 1919, Box 6, Hoffman Papers; “Life Story,” 27.

⁶⁷ Hoffman to Leslie D. Ward, December 16, 1908, Box 1, Hoffman Papers.

⁶⁸ See Sypher, ed., Frederick L. Hoffman; Patterson, The Dread Disease.

⁶⁹ Cassedy, “Frederick Ludwig Hoffman”; Sypher, “The Rediscovered Prophet.”

⁷⁰ Higham, John, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, NJ, 1988), 197–208Google Scholar; O'Connor, Richard, The German-Americans: An Informal History (Boston, 1968), 383–84.Google Scholar

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⁷⁴ 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.

⁷⁵ Ibid., 4.

⁷⁶ Hoffman, Frederick L., “On the Duty of Americans of German Birth,” Economic World, April 7, 1917.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Rigney, , “Frederick L. Hoffman,” 236.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Ibid., 232. The Friends of German Democracy was headed by the son of former Civil War General Franz Sigel; Keller, , States of Belonging, 235–36.Google Scholar For an example of an FGD propaganda leaflet, see WW I Document Archive http://www.lib.byu.edu/˜rdh/wwi/1915/propleaf.html

⁷⁹ Hoffman, , “Autocracy and Paternalism,” 1.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Hoffman, , “New Verses of a Wanderer,” 1923Google Scholar, Box 13; Hoffman, Beatrix, The Wages of Sickness: The Politics of Health Insurance in Progressive America (Chapel Hill, 2001), 60–64.Google Scholar

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⁸⁵ Lubove, Roy, The Struggle for Social Security (Cambridge, MA, 1968), 83Google Scholar; Gompers, , “Labor vs. its Barnacles,” American Federationist (April 1916): 269.Google Scholar 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; B. Hoffman, Wages of Sickness, ch. 6.

⁸⁶ Numbers, Almost Persuaded, 18.

⁸⁷ Rigney, , “Frederick L. Hoffman,” ivGoogle Scholar; Hoffman to John Dryden, February 28,1906, Box 1; “Prudential Owns a Part of Gibraltar,” The Sunday Call (Newark, NJ), November 10, 1901, clipping in Box 12, Hoffman Papers.

⁸⁸ Messenger, Hiram J., “The Rate of Sickness” (1917)Google Scholar, New York Public Library Insurance Pamphlet Collection; 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); R.P. Shorts to John B. Andrews, January 27, 1916, Reel 16, AALL Papers; Hoffman to Forrest F. Dryden, January 5, 1917, Box 5, Hoffman Papers; Rodgers, , Atlantic Crossings, 263–64Google Scholar; Hoffman, B., Wages of Sickness, 106–07.Google Scholar

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⁹⁰ Numbers, Almost Persuaded, 22.

⁹¹ Commons, John R., “Health Insurance,” Wisconsin Medical Journal 17 (1918): 222Google Scholar; quoted in Numbers, Almost Persuaded, 78.

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⁹⁴ Ibid., 81.

⁹⁵ Ibid., 67, 82.

⁹⁶ Hoffman to Dryden, December 12, 1916, Hoffman Papers; Hoffman, B., Wages of Sickness, 113.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ 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).

⁹⁸ Cox, Alfred, “Seven Years of National Health Insurance in England: A Retrospect,” Journal of the American Medical Association 76 (1921): 1313–14Google Scholar; Gilbert, Bentley B., The Evolution of National Insurance in Great Britain: The Origins of the Welfare State (London, 1966), 400–16.Google Scholar See also Fraser, Derek, The Evolution of the British Welfare State: A History of Social Policy since the Industrial Revolution (London, 1973).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹⁹ 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. See also Gilbert, Evolution of National Insurance.

¹⁰⁰ 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.).

¹⁰¹ Interviews with British physicians, December 1, 1919, Reel 63, AALL Papers.

¹⁰² “An American View of the National Insurance Scheme,” The British Medical Journal (September 18, 1920): 444.

¹⁰³ Irving Fisher to Frederick Hoffman, December 19, 1916, Reel 17, AALL Papers. Also quoted in Numbers, Almost Persuaded, 61.

¹⁰⁴ 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.

¹⁰⁵ Hoffman to Dryden, October 20, 1920, Box 8; December 16,1918, Box 6; May 21, 1918, Box 6, Hoffman Papers; Hoffman, B., Wages of Sickness, 109–10.Google Scholar For a summary of the state commission reports, see Numbers, Almost Persuaded, 99.

¹⁰⁶ 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.

¹⁰⁷ Colin Gordon, Dead on Arrival: Health Care and the Limits of Social Provision in the United States (Princeton, forthcoming).

¹⁰⁸ Haller, , “Race, Mortality, and Life Insurance,” 260–61Google Scholar; Paltrow, Scot J., “Old Notion of Black Mortality Influenced Insurers,” The Wall Street Journal, December 26, 2000.Google Scholar 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.Google Scholar

On the rise of new racial ideologies in the 1920s, see Pascoe, Peggy, “Miscegenation Law, Court Cases, and Ideologies of ‘Race’ in Twentieth-Century America,” Journal of American History 83 (June 1996): 44–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ngai, Mae M., “The Architecture of Race in American Immigration Law: A Reexamination of the Immigration Act of 1924,” Journal of American History 86 (June 1999): 67–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Haller, Outcasts from Evolution; Fredrickson, Black Image in the White Mind.

¹⁰⁹ Paltrow, Scot J., “Past Due: In Relic of ‘50s and ‘60s, Blacks Still Pay More For a Type of Insurance,” Wall Street Journal, April 27, 2000Google Scholar; Paltrow, “Old Notion of Black Mortality.”

¹¹⁰ Stone, , “The Struggle for the Soul of Health Insurance,” 299.Google Scholar

¹¹¹ “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.

¹¹² Eugenical News 9 (July 1924): 67. Thanks to Barry Mehler for this reference.

¹¹³ Rigney, , “Frederick L. Hoffman,” 125–26Google Scholar; Hoffman, F.L., “The Problem of Negro-White Intermixture and Intermarriage,” Eugenics in Race and State, vol. II (1923), 187.Google Scholar

¹¹⁴ Hoftman, “Race Pathology in Hawaii,” Address delivered before the Honolulu County Medical Society, August, 1929; “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.”

¹¹⁵ The Economic World, April 7, 1917; Prudential, Home News, November, 1919Google Scholar, quoted in Rigney, “Frederick L. Hoffman.”

¹¹⁶ Hoffman to Ella Hoffman, November 16, 1927, Box 23, Hoffman Papers; Sypher, “The Rediscovered Prophet”; Cassedy, , “Frederick Ludwig Hoffman,” 385.Google Scholar

¹¹⁷ Rigney, , “Frederick L. Hoffman,” 420.Google Scholar