Breeding Better Vermonters: The Eugenics Project in the Green Mountain State

by Nancy L. Gallagher

Eugenics -- the study of human racial progress through selective breeding -- frequently invokes images of social engineering, virulent racism, immigrant persecution, and Nazi genocide, but Vermont's little known adventure in eugenics shows the inherent adaptability of eugenics theory and methods to parochial social justice. Beginning with genealogies of Vermont's rural poor in the 1920s, and concluding in the 1930s with an exposé of ethnic prejudice in Vermont's largest city, this story of the Eugenics Survey of Vermont explores the scope, limits, and changing interpretations of eugenics in America and offers a new approach to the history of progressive politics and social reform in New England. Inspired and directed by Zoology Professor Henry F. Perkins, the survey, through social research, political agitation, and education campaigns, infused eugenic agendas into progressive programs for child welfare, mental health, and rural community development. Breeding Better Vermonters examines social, ethnic, and religious tensions and reveals how population studies, theories of human heredity, and a rhetoric of altruism became subtle, yet powerful tools of social control and exclusion in a state whose motto was "freedom and unity."

Genres: History, Eugenics

253 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1999

Reviews

[Zenith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the scariest book I have ever read. The events are painful enough, but what scares me the most is the humanity of the leaders of the eugenics movement as portrayed in this book. It would be one thing if a genocide were perpetrated by monsters, but it's far more scary to realize that such evil could be done out of insecurity, ignorance, and a wholly misguided sense of altruism.

[Mr. Williams]

There is alot here that I probably will not get to, but this book does seem to be the comprehensive information source on the Vermont Eugenics Project.

[Carl Lavigne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-researched look into the many facets of Vermont's eugenic's movement. There is plenty of context, a wealth of notes and sources. The writing is quality and structured as a cogent narrative history.

I was disappointed by the limited information on how the sterilization movement affected most notably the Abenaki people of Vermont, and continued on through the 70s, though it's possible much of that information was unavailable at the time of the book's writing. A necessary read for Vermonters and all Americans wishing to understand the past--and the present.