Although his work was partly in the spirit of the Victorian England times, Galton was then and even more now what we would call a racist.“The science of improving stock,” he wrote, “takes cognizance of all the influences that tend in however remote degree to give the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had.” In 1909, Galton and his colleagues established the journal Eugenics Review, which argued in its first edition that nations should compete with each other in “race-betterment” and that the number of people in with “pre-natal conditions” in hospitals and asylums should be “reduced to a minimum” through sterilization and selective breeding.Galton’s theories gained increasing prominence internationally, particularly in the New World.Although eugenics would later accrue sinister connotations, many of the early adopters of eugenic theories were American progressives who believed science could be used to guide social policies and create a better society for all.