Comments on four papers on economics and human heterogeneity

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, July, 2005 by Malcolm Rutherford

Things are a bit different for the bulk of the progressive labor economists discussed by Leonard. They were not major figures within the eugenics movement itself. For them, eugenics was a part of a program of reform that had as its central object the improvement of the position of labor. Eugenic arguments were integral to this program as providing a justification for the exclusion of those who posed a competitive threat: women, children, and new immigrants. "Labor" was identified with white, adult, male labor, and the eugenic point turned the exclusion of other people into a social benefit and not a social cost. Without the eugenic component, the progressive argument was an argument for class legislation, legislation that would benefit some (white male workers) but disadvantage others (employers, immigrants, and women). Class legislation would not likely find support either in legislatures or in the courts. It is exactly the effect of the eugenic argument to turn this class benefit into a general social benefit, so that the "general good" (as mentioned by Peart and Levy) would be served by policies such as minimum wages, restrictions on the hours of work of women, and restrictions on immigration. Furthermore, the basis of this argument claimed to be "scientific" and objective, and not sentimental or religious. To argue that eugenics allowed the labor legislation argument to be turned into one of general social benefit is not to say that eugenics was adopted purely as a tactical device--it is an important part of how the arguments mesh together and support each other and of why they are found together.

For many of the others involved with eugenic argument, the goals were narrower. Concern about immigration and the effect of an open immigration policy on the quality of the race was of concern to a much wider constituency in the United States than the progressives. Concern with the racial and dysgenic effects of immigration did not necessarily imply acceptance of a wide-ranging eugenic policy such as supported by Fisher. Even people who were in most other matters on the side of free markets and were opposed to state intervention had concerns about immigration, race quality, and assimilation. It seems to me that F. A. Walker is a fine example of that, as are people such as Carver and Fetter. They were relatively orthodox in their economic ideas, and their views of the role of the state in the economy were significantly less on the pro-regulatory side than those of the progressives.

Economics in the 1920s and 1930s in the United States and elsewhere was deeply impacted by eugenic ideas. Not as deeply impacted as sociology, it must be said, but undeniably impacted nevertheless. Moreover, eugenic programs--at least of the more activist sort-clearly require government intervention and a state apparatus to implement. Thus, the espousal of eugenic ideas often does go together with some degree of statism. The converse of this is that one might expect genuine believers in laissez-faire to be less likely to be supportive of eugenic programs, but it is important to realize that not all believers in state action were "progressive" in other aspects of their thinking, and that eugenic ideas were adopted as part of a considerable variety of political and economic agendas. In the American case, eugenicism cuts across some of the usual political divisions due to the special importance of the immigration issue in the American debate. Those in favor of restrictive immigration policies frequently used eugenic ideas, but this implies little concerning their more general views concerning state action.