Edward Alsworth Ross: An Intellectual Shift From Biological Eugenics to Sociological Racial Betterment

Abstract

This paper explores Edward Ross, a prominent sociologist and chief architect of modern sociology, and his relationship to eugenics and the birth control movement during a period of correspondence between Ross and Margaret Sanger. This paper contextualizes Ross in the within eugenics from its origins to its legislative history. With regard to the birth control movement, this paper details Margaret Sanger's relationship to eugenics. This paper also analyzes several major published pieces of Ross's work during this period concluding that in the end Ross does not reject eugenics. Rather that Ross embraced birth control as a means of fulfilling the principles of racial betterment he once found through mainline American eugenics.