Mistaking Eugenics for Social Darwinism: Why Eugenics Is Missing from the History of American Economics Thomas C
Mistaking Eugenics for Social Darwinism: Why Eugenics Is Missing from the History of American Economics Thomas C. Leonard American economics came of age as an expert policy science during the Progressive Era (roughly 1890–1920), which was also the high-water mark of biological approaches to social and economic problems. Eu- genic and other biological thought deeply influenced American econom- ics and the other newly professionalizing social sciences, especially so- ciology and psychology. The roster of anglophone economists (and other social scientists) who embraced eugenic ideas and policies is impressive, in both its breadth and its ideological diversity. The progressive social scientists, those who led the Progressive Era movement for labor reform, were especially attracted to eugenic ideas. Scholars like Irving Fisher, Francis Amasa Walker, Henry Rogers Sea- ger, Edward Alsworth Ross, John R. Commons, Sidney Webb, Charles Richmond Henderson, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and journalists like Paul Kellogg of the Survey and the New Republic’s Herbert Croly, all invoked eugenic ideas, especially to justify the exclusionary labor and immigration legislation that is a central legacy of the Progressive Era. I make the case that eugenic thought influenced the reform ideas and legislation of the Progressive Era in Leonard 2003a and Leonard 2005. The present essay is historiographical in emphasis. It asks, if eugenic thought influenced reform economics and legislation of the Progressive I wish to thank Brad Bateman, Bill Barber, David Levy, Steve Medema, Sandy Peart, Malcolm Rutherford, and the other participants at the HOPE 2004 conference, the 2004 George Mason University Summer Institute, and the 2004 History of Economics Society conference session on the Progressive Era.
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