The State of Ohio’s Auditors, the Enumeration of Population and the Project of Eugenics

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Abstract

In 1856, the State of Ohio began an enumeration of its population to enumerate and identify people with disabilities. This paper examines the role of the accounting profession in this project, which supported the transatlantic eugenics movement and its genocidal attempts to eliminate disabled persons from the population. We show that successive waves of legislation incorporated State and County auditors along with Township clerks and assessors into the mechanics of an enumeration of population which focused on the identification, categorization and counting of the disabled population of the State. The financial expertise and structures of the State were relied on for the execution of this mandate, which remained in place for over a century.

Authors

• Cameron Graham, York University

• Martin Emanuel Persson, University of Western Ontario

• Vaughan S Radcliffe, University of Western Ontario

• Mitchell Stein, University of Western Ontario