IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/hop/hopeec/v41y2009i1p109-141.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

American Economic Reform in the Progressive Era: Its Foundational Beliefs and Their Relation to Eugenics

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas C. Leonard

Abstract

This essay explores the progressive beliefs other than human hierarchy that inclined Progressive Era economic reform toward eugenics. It argues the following: that the progressives believed in a powerful, centralized state, conceiving of government as the best means for promoting the social good and rejecting the individualism of (classical) liberalism; that the progressives venerated social efficiency; that the progressives believed in the epistemic and moral authority of science, a belief that comprised their view that biology could explain and control human inheritance and that the still nascent sciences of society could explain and control the causes of economic ills; that the progressives believed that intellectuals should guide social and economic progress, a belief erected upon two subsidiary faiths, a faith in the disinterestedness and incorruptibility of the experts who would run the technocracy they envisioned, and a faith that expertise could not only serve the social good, but also identify it; and that, while antimonopoly, the progressives believed that increasing industrial consolidation was inevitable, and desirable, consistent with their faith in planning, organization, and command.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas C. Leonard, 2009. "American Economic Reform in the Progressive Era: Its Foundational Beliefs and Their Relation to Eugenics," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 41(1), pages 109-141, Spring.
    • Handle: RePEc:hop:hopeec:v:41:y:2009:i:1:p:109-141
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hope.dukejournals.org/content/41/1/109.full.pdf+html
    File Function: link to full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mikayla Novak, 2016. "Deirdre Mccloskey, Kirznerian Growth and the Role of Social Networks: Comment," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(2), pages 217-220, June.
    2. Butkiewicz, James, 2015. "Eugene Meyer And The German Influence On The Origin Of Us Federal Financial Rescues," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 37(1), pages 57-77, March.
    3. Matthew Hood & John Nofsinger & Abhishek Varma, 2014. "Conservation, Discrimination, and Salvation: Investors’ Social Concerns in the Stock Market," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 45(1), pages 5-37, February.
    4. Dyball, Maria Cadiz & Rooney, Jim, 2019. "Governing and disciplining Filipino migrant workers’ health at Hawaiian sugar plantations," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    5. Luca Fiorito & Cosma Orsi, 2012. "Anti-Semitism and Progressive Era Social Science. The case of John R. Commons," Department of Economics University of Siena 658, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    6. Soldatos, Gerasimos T., 2014. "On the Missing Macroeconomics of Social Liberalism: From Physiocrats to Pre-war Chicagoans and Freiburg," MPRA Paper 59425, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Progressive Era; eugenics;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hop:hopeec:v:41:y:2009:i:1:p:109-141. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Center for the History of Political Economy Webmaster (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ViewProduct.php?viewby=journal&productid=45614 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.