The Lasting Legacy of Eugenics

Troy Camplin
Aug 29, 2017 · 6 min read

From about 1890 through about the 1940s — the Progressive Era — anyone who was anyone believed in eugenics. John Maynard Keynes was an ardent supporter of eugenics, as was Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Woodrow Wilson, and Theodore Roosevelt (the first Progressive President). The same was true of many mainstream economist and sociologist, and certainly of most if not all biologists at the time. So from the Fabian Socialists in Britain to the Progressives in America, and many others in between, eugenics was widely accepted and championed. Indeed, it was…

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