num_pages: 272
description: The first two decades of the twentieth century saw the flowering of a host of reform movements in the United States collectively called progressivism. Despite the fact that progressivism possessed a varied ideological content, the sociological bases for the movements usually expressed only the hopes of white, middle-class Americans. Some progressives had little faith in the innate ability of men to solve the problems of society in a democratic fashion. In this post-Darwinian age, they shared with eugenists, through their common belief in naturalism, a distrust of democratic politics; for euenists and many progressives recognized the animal origins of human nature and thereby assumed that for the majority of human beings the benefits of civilization were only skin deep.
language: English
title: Eugenics and the Progressives
publisher: Vanderbilt University Press