Professor of Political Science, Norwich University
Director, Bureau of Municipal Affairs
Eugenics Survey Advisory Committee, 1925-1936
K. R. B. Flint was born and raised in Middlesex, Vermont and graduated
from Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont in 1903. In 1907 he joined
the faculty of Norwich, where he taught political science, headed the Department
of Social Sciences, and directed the Bureau of Municipal Affairs in the
1920s. He was one of the founders of the Green Mountain Club, who promoted
the idea of a "wilderness trail" through the Green Mountains extending the
length of the state, known today as the Long Trail. An active participant
in the Vermont Conference of Social Work, local government and community
affairs, Professor Flint actively promoted state and municipal planning in
order to bring Vermont's town-based, laissez-faire system of poor relief
and the management of the "dependent classes" in line with twentieth century
standards. His study, Poor Relief in Vermont (1916), became a key
resource for progressive social legislation and for the Eugenics Survey
of Vermont. His eugenic beliefs emerge in his writings:
"One of the worst conditions in Vermont is the mingling of the feeble minded with the general population.... There is no longer any question about the tendency of defectives to breed defectives, and the community which carelessly permits the mentally deficient to move about freely with the general population may someday find itself burdened with a tribe of paupers, criminals, drunkards, and prostitutes....[Cases we have discovered] are representative of much evil that lurks in these hamlets in the hills." |
Address to the Vermont Conference of Social Work, 1917 |
Professor Flint served on the Eugenics Survey Advisory Board, the Committee on the Human Factor and the Subcommittee on the Handicapped for the Vermont Commission on Country Life. His chief interest being municipal planning, he wrote the report on "Rural Government" for the VCCL's Rural Vermont: A Program for the Future.