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'More Merciful And Not Less Effective': Eugenics And American Economics In The Progressive Era
Oliver Wendell Holmes was made a Progressive lion upon his pithy dis- sent to the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision to overturn a New York statute restricting (male) bakers’ working hours. “The 14th Amend- ment,” said Holmes famously, “does not enact the Social Statics of Mr. Herbert Spencer.”1 Twenty-two years later, in another well-known case, Holmes wrote for the majority, which upheld the constitutionality of a Virginia law proposing involuntary sterilization of persons believed to be mentally retarded—the “feebleminded,” in the jargon of the day. “The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes,” Holmes wrote in Buck v. Bell (1927).
“Three generations of imbeciles,” Holmes volunteered, “is enough.” How does an opponent of Spencerian Social Darwinism come to en- dorse coercive sterilization of the unfit? This essay argues that, as a mat- ter of history, there is no contradiction in the views that underwrite the two opinions. It is not merely that both statutes proposed to subordi- nate individual rights to a putatively greater social good.2 Progressive thought, it turns out, did not have to travel far when it moved from labor statutes conceived as protecting society from Social Darwinism to eu- genic legislation conceived as protecting society from persons deemed biologically unfit. The heart of the Progressive enterprise—to improve society by uplifting the industrial poor—was not the whole of the Pro- gressive enterprise. In fact, in the Progressive Era especially, eugen- ic treatment of those deemed biologically inferior was promoted as a means to the end of uplifting the industrial poor.
The history of eugenics and the history of American economics re- main mostly unacquainted. Historians of eugenics have shown little in- terest in Progressive-Era political economy. And histories of Progres- sive-Era American economics routinely fail to even mention eugenics or scientific racism, movements with widespread intellectual and politi- cal influence.3 This essay, which considers the influence of eugenics on American economics in the Progressive Era, begins an attempt to fill this historical lacuna.
By Thomas C. Leonard, Project MUSE
Oliver Wendell Holmes was made a Progressive lion upon his pithy dis- sent to the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision to overturn a New York statute restricting (male) bakers’ working hours. “The 14th Amend- ment,” said Holmes famously, “does not enact the Social Statics of Mr. Herbert Spencer.”1 Twenty-two years later, in another well-known case, Holmes wrote for the majority, which upheld the constitutionality of a Virginia law proposing involuntary sterilization of persons believed to be mentally retarded—the “feebleminded,” in the jargon of the day. “The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes,” Holmes wrote in Buck v. Bell (1927).
“Three generations of imbeciles,” Holmes volunteered, “is enough.” How does an opponent of Spencerian Social Darwinism come to en- dorse coercive sterilization of the unfit? This essay argues that, as a mat- ter of history, there is no contradiction in the views that underwrite the two opinions. It is not merely that both statutes proposed to subordi- nate individual rights to a putatively greater social good.2 Progressive thought, it turns out, did not have to travel far when it moved from labor statutes conceived as protecting society from Social Darwinism to eu- genic legislation conceived as protecting society from persons deemed biologically unfit. The heart of the Progressive enterprise—to improve society by uplifting the industrial poor—was not the whole of the Pro- gressive enterprise. In fact, in the Progressive Era especially, eugen- ic treatment of those deemed biologically inferior was promoted as a means to the end of uplifting the industrial poor.
The history of eugenics and the history of American economics re- main mostly unacquainted. Historians of eugenics have shown little in- terest in Progressive-Era political economy. And histories of Progres- sive-Era American economics routinely fail to even mention eugenics or scientific racism, movements with widespread intellectual and politi- cal influence.3 This essay, which considers the influence of eugenics on American economics in the Progressive Era, begins an attempt to fill this historical lacuna.
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