Progressivism was a complex movement for social reform that gripped American politics from the 1890s to the 1920s.
Progressives were often driven by a desire to rectify problems created by nineteenth-century industrialization, the growth of cities, and the political and economic inequities they observed in urban areas.During the first two decades of the twentieth century Progressive reformers agitated successfully for legislation to protect working men and women, a federal income tax, an amendment to the Constitution granting women the right to vote, programs for young people including juvenile courts and city playgrounds, and public health programs to combat tuberculosis and venereal disease.
These campaigns were humanitarian efforts aimed at improving the living conditions of millions of Americans.Often Progressives relied on research from sciences--sociology, economics, and especially medicine.
Indeed, this reliance on science and on experts was a trademark of Progressive reform. Progressives looked to science to identify the causes of social problems, and sought in science the means to eradicate these problems.Progressives also looked to government to provide the structure for reform and passed legislation requiring individuals to make changes believed in the best interest of the whole society. So, for example, Progressives passed laws to improve conditions in which men and women were forced to work--to limit hours of work, to mandate minimum wages, to end child labor, and to pay compensation for workers accidentally injured on the job.
Many of the legislative successes of these reformers are still widely regarded as "progressive," as steps that significantly benefited the welfare of ordinary Americans.
But, Progressivism also had a dark side.
This side that also relied on science and experts, but this time to justify policies of exclusion and control. Progressives passed the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution establishing national Prohibition, promoted Americanization programs to socialize new immigrants, and agitated for laws to stop the flow of immigrants into cities they thought ruined by the influx of alien cultures. Progressives also promoted the public health programs that resulted in the forced quarantine of Typhoid Mary.
This unit further explores the "dark side" of Progressivism and the "limits" of public health.
State legislatures, motivated by the desire to make America better, passed laws requiring compulsory sterilization of many residents of state institutions for the "insane" and the "feebleminded." One of these residents was Carrie Buck.
The Story
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In 1924 Carrie Buck, an inmate of the Virginia State Colony for Feebleminded and Epileptics, was involuntarily sterilized under the state's new Compulsory Sterilization Act. The constitutionality of this law was tested in 1927, in the Supreme Court case known as Buck v. Bell. In this case, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., writing for the majority, upheld the law and penned the infamous line, "three generations of imbeciles is enough." |
The Objective: Why was Carrie Buck sterilized?
Buck v. Bell represents the
central dilemma of Progressivism and the central problem of
mandatory public health health programs - the conflict
between the state's "police power" and obligation to protect
its citizens v. the right of the individual. These are no online study questions to be
completed for this assignment. However, let these questions
guide your reading so that you come to class prepared to
discuss the issues raised by the sterilization of Carrie
Buck.
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A Note on Language: Insanity and feeblemindedness are not terms we use today. Because these terms were common in the Progressive writings reproduced in this unit, you should be aware of their meanings. "Insane" asylums, institutions to care for peoplejudged to be mentally ill, began to appear in the United States during the 1830s,an age of reform sometimes called the era of asylum-building. During these same years reformers also constructed separate institutions for people thought to be mentally retarded. By the late nineteenth-century the word used to describe such people was "feebleminded." This was the word employed by Progressives when they spoke of people who showed signs of having "low IQ." |