From the turn of the century until the 1930s, when its association with Nazism discredited it, the "science" of eugenics enjoyed great popularity with many social scientists and intellectuals in the United States and Great Britain: The belief that an understanding of human genetics could be used to improve the condition of humankind appealed to a wide variety of people. Birth control advocate Margaret Sanger was deeply influenced by the British authority on human reproduction, and eugenicist, Havelock Ellis. In the years shortly before World War I, eugenics became a popular .craze, promoted in newspapers and magazines as the panacea for a variety of social ills. "Fitter Family" contests were held at state fairs; sermon contests on the subject of the family were held in churches and synagogues. The eugenics craze also provided a pseudoscientific justification for rightwing opponents of immigration, such as...