Protecting Family and Race

Thomas Leonard

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 2005, vol. 64, issue 3, 757-791

Abstract: Abstract American economics came of age during the Progressive Era, a time when biological approaches to economic reform were at their high‐water mark. Reform‐minded economists argued that the labor force should be rid of unfit workers—whom they labeled “unemployables,”“parasites,” and the “industrial residuum”—so as to uplift superior, deserving workers. Women were also frequently classified as unemployable. Leading progressives, including women at the forefront of labor reform, justified exclusionary labor legislation for women on grounds that it would (1) protect the biologically weaker sex from the hazards of market work; (2) protect working women from the temptation of prostitution; (3) protect male heads of household from the economic competition of women; and (4) ensure that women could better carry out their eugenic duties as “mothers of the race.” What united these heterogeneous rationales was the reformers’ aim of discouraging women's labor‐force participation.

Date: 2005
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