“More Merciful and Not Less Effective”: Eugenics and American Economics in the Progressive Era

was made a Progressive lion upon his pithy dissent to the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision to overturn a New York statute restricting (male) bakers' working hours. "The 14th Amendment," said Holmes famously, "does not enact the Social Statics of Mr. Herbert Spencer." 1 Twenty-two years later, in another well-known case, Holmes wrote for the majority, which upheld the constitutionality of a Virginia law proposing involuntary sterilization of persons believed to be mentally retarded-the "feebleminded," in the jargon of the day. "The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes," Holmes wrote in Buck v. Bell (1927). "Three generations of imbeciles," Holmes volunteered, "is enough."