White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America

by Nancy Isenberg

While eugenicists made it fashionable to celebrate a hereditary ruling class, they were as bent on organizing social classes on the basis of breeding capacity. One of the most popular eugenics lecturers, C. W. Saleeby, spoke up for something called “eugenic feminism,” insisting that the brightest women should not only take up the suffrage cause but also accept their patriotic duty to breed. He imagined female society organized as a bee colony: the queens of superior stock bred throughout their fertile years, while educated sterile women (or postmenopausal) were best suited for reform activity. Professor William McDougall at Harvard came up with an equally radical solution. He called for a breeding colony of “Eugenia,” a separate protectorate within the United States, in which the best and brightest would propagate a superior stock. Eugenia would be at once a university and a stud farm. Raised as “aristocrats” in the tradition of “noblesse oblige,” the products of the special colony would go out into the world as skilled public servants.