Breeding Out Vice: Prostitution Reform and Eugenics in Progressive Era Chicago

In an effort to cure society of the "social evil" that was prostitution, social reformers and eugenic reformers of the Progressive Era used the tools in their respective kits to remove the institution of prostitution from Chicago. Through archival analysis, this research examines the similarities between eugenicists' biological determinist rhetoric and social reformers' social-constructionist rhetoric in Progressive Era Chicago. Both eugenicists and social reformers sought to eliminate prostitution in the city, but did so in seemingly competing ways. Eugenicist reformers found that those who engaged with prostitution were biologically predisposed to do so, and are thus unable to be morally reformed. Their solution was to target the prostitutes themselves, diagnosing them with, now defunct, mental disabilities such as "feeblemindedness." Social reformers found that those women who engaged with prostitution did so out of societal victimization, and were thus able to be morally reformed and sent back into the world to lead an "honest life." This research argues that despite the opposing logics behind these two distinct groups, the solutions posited by eugenicist reformers and social reformers to solve the "problem" of prostitution were closer from a historical perspective than even these two groups believed.