On the Origins of American Business Leaders: Frank W. Taussig, Carl S. Joslyn and the “Brain Trust” of American Eugenics

In their 1932 volume American Business Leaders: A Study in Social Origins and Social Stratification, Frank W. Taussig and Carl S. Joslyn, then a young Harvard graduate, argued that success in business depended more on innate superiority than on other environmental factors such as financial aid, influential connections, and formal education. The aim of this article is to analyze the main contentions of Taussig and Joslyn, as well as the intellectual genesis of, and the general reactions to, this controversial volume. Although our main focus is on Taussig and Joslyn, other figures, all directly affiliated with Harvard, will play a decisive role in our narrative—the economist Thomas Nixon Carver, the psychologist William McDougall, and the sociologist Pitirim Aleksandrovič Sorokin. This makes the scope of this article in many respects broader than its title may suggest—in the sense that it will allow us to place a work like American Business Leaders within the context of an important strand of social science research at Harvard during the interwar years.