James A. Field: the making and unmaking of an eugenist

Abstract

James Alfred Field’s enthusiastic survey on the “Progress of Eugenics,” published in 1911 on the Quarterly Journal of Economics, is usually referred to as evidence of the pervasiveness of eugenic and biologically deterministic arguments among Progressive Era social scientists. Over the years, however, Field substantially changed his position and in a series of subsequent articles and addresses, posthumously collected in the volume Essays on Population and Other Papers (1931), he revealed an increasing uneasiness towards the claims of the eugenists. The aim of this note is to offer a reconstruction of his intellectual path, from his early advocacy of eugenics to his mature and disenchanted views on eugenic selection, population planning, and birth control.