Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics and American Economics in the Progressive Era by Thomas C. Leonard

Reviewed by: Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics and American Economics in the Progressive Era by Thomas C. Leonard Wesley R. Bishop Thomas C. Leonard, Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics and American Economics in the Progressive Era (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2016) Focusing primarily on the highly educated upper middle class reformers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Thomas C. Leonard in Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics and American Economics in the Progressive Era traces the development of a larger social and political movement which valued efficiency, expertise, and order in organizing the modern world. Leonard shows how psychologists, sociologists, political scientists, educators, and economists underwent a profound change in these years, becoming members of increasingly professionalized and accredited fields where members were expected to apply their expertise to the improvement of society. Leonard argues that this desire to reform society grew out of a concern brought on by the crises of large scale industrial capitalism. Progressive economists, like Richard T. Ely, John R. Commons, and Edward A. Ross thought that through centralized planning, guided by social expertise, one could master the increasing problems of the modern economy. It is why, Leonard argues, Taylorism and scientific management became such popular and widely celebrated concepts. Decried today as manipulative and exploitive, in its time Progressives viewed Taylorism, with its time and motion studies, as a reform that epitomized humane economic planning. Eventually this commitment to efficiency spread to all spheres of life, from Shailer Matthews who promoted the idea of scientific management to govern churches and education, to political figures like Woodrow Wilson and others who saw much of the division between various branches of government as wasteful and counterproductive. [End Page 354] Leonard likewise cites the work of Ellen Swallow Richards, an educator, who applied the principles of efficiency to home life. Specifically, she developed the study of home economics and popularized the idea of introducing it as a subject in schools. “Home economics,” Leonard explains, “was not just the study of stretching a dollar. Richards conceived of her discipline as a science of ‘human ecology.’ She coined the term ‘euthenics’ to describe the science of producing ‘more efficient human beings’ by improving living conditions.” (68) This was an important development because it signified a larger shift where Progressive Era reformers collapsed the divide between traditionally public and private spheres. Based on a belief in modernity, and that expertise, planning, and efficiency could provide a way to address the problems of modern society, it is not surprising that the reform efforts eventually included people’s basic reproduction. The development of eugenics, therefore, was a result of this ideological shift brought on by changes in the political economy. Of course Western science had a long established history of using hierarchies to justify racism and European supremacy. However, this new expression was markedly different as Progressive reformers began to read and apply the thoughts found in Darwin and evolutionary biology. This became particularly popular with William Z. Ripley’s 1899 book The Races of Europe which paved the way for future work in scientifically classifying and labeling groups of people. Psychologists, such as Lewis Terman and Henry Herbert Goddard, went further with this, convincing government agencies that intelligence, and therefore citizenship, immigration, and fitness to reproduce could be determined not only by race, but also by “intelligence.” Devising series of tests, these psychologists were able to convince the growing administrative state to give them access to large swaths of people for testing. This was justified as it “would expose the tens of thousands of mental defectives passing as normal and bring them under the ‘surveillance and protection of society.’” (73) This was appealing to the state because, as Goddard, Terman, and others promised, “identification of mental defectives would significantly reduce the social cost, increasingly borne by the government of ‘crime, pauperism, and industrial inefficiency.’” (72) Yet it is important to ask: what was the overarching aim of the broader Progressive Era? Why were these individuals committed to a particular expression of social reform? Leonard demonstrates that the genesis of these reforms to control the literal bodies in the body politic were economic in nature. But this raises a larger question. Why attempt to...

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