Burlington, Vermont

Some of us up in Vermont are finding that we started something when we conceived and organized the Commission on Country Life as a background for Eugenics. The publication a year ago of the results of this undertaking appear now to have been only the beginning. Having found out what to do to improve the setting for future generations of Vermonters it now appears that the two hundred Vermonters who studied themselves and their surroundings for three years must proceed to put their own advice into practice. The title of the book is " What bearing does it have upon Eugenics?

The Eugenics Survey was responsible for the begetting of this child which soon put its parent in the background in size and vociferousness. It was planned as a means of clearing up some of the complications of conserving the good old Vermont stock in the rural parts, and now that the material has been gathered it proves to have accomplished its purpose to a notable degree. Studying pedigrees of harmful or of helpful families, the problems of racial groups or occupational classifications, or whatever questions of eugenical import, is now, because of this background material, a far less haphazard and complex undertaking.

The more intelligent and socially minded people of all walks of life in all parts of Vermont were gathered in committees according to their various interests and abilities. There was a surprising amount of enthusiastic support and hard, continuous thinking and working on the part of these thirty committees and subcommittees.

I. Committee on the Human Factor 1. Eugenics Survey 2. Population Changes II. Topography and Climate III. Soils IV. Agriculture ‐‐ With six subcommittees on Apples, Potatoes, Dairy Problems, etc. V. Forestry and Woodworking Industries VI. Summer Residents and Tourists VII. Fish and Game VIII. Home and Community Life IX. Recreation X. Medical Facilities XI. Educational Facilities-Subcommittees on 1. Elementary Education in Rural Schools 2. Colleges and Normal Schools 3. Libraries 4. Social Agencies Affecting Education 5. The Service of Secondary Schools 6. Adult Education 7. Financing Education XII. Care of the Handicapped. Blind and Deaf, Crippled, Tubercular, Feeble Minded, Insane, Paupers XIII. The Vermont Foundation XIV. Rural Government XV. Citizenship ‐‐ The use of the suffrage ‐‐ citizenship training ‐‐ education VI. Religious Forces ‐‐ Making the churches more potent instruments for raising the tone of rural communities spiritually, morally and socially. XVII. Traditions and Ideals. With divisions on Vermont Biography, Poetry, Prose Writing, Songs and Ballads.

The strictly industrial topics such as manufacturing, taxation and transportation, were left out because they were being covered by commissions or other organizations.

The range of these subjects is ambitious. The researches were carefully planned and extended back in time through the years to the early history of the state. The plans of the towns and of groups within them were looked over as well as the established practices and institutions, with an eye to their prospect of achievement in line with the raising of the levels of human living. The work done and the plans for future work of the state departments and of the private statewide organizations were evaluated.

In spite of the smallness of Vermont, a good deal of narrow provincialism exists and the excellent methods operating in one community in agriculture, schools, or recreation were not known even to their nearest neighbors. Local pride has been responsible for inefficient and feeble efforts as well as for much wholesome progre face of accusations of impracticality, must have infinite courage. Especially must Eugenics take due account of the multitudinous elements of the environment in which it proposes to have its superior children born and reared. Such was the purpose and aim of these Background Studies in Eugenics in Vermont.

Right here let me give evidence of the baselessness of the prediction that this was "just another survey" and that the printed report would end all practical value for the enterprise. Let us take the village library as an example of the opposite condition. The library situation is being attacked with skill and energy by the Committee on Rural Libraries. Funds have been secured for a two year experiment and a woman of superior training, experience and charm of personality is now taking her book truck from village to village, aiding librarians and studying their special problems. In good time she and her committee will have some practical ideas to put where they will do the most good. Some of the struggling back-room-in-a-private-house-libraries will be persuaded to combine for greater service and modern books will be put on the shelves and circulated. Some of them will be about Eugenics and its background.

Another group which refused to disband is the one on Adult Education and that also helps the spread of Eugenical knowledge. The original committee has been augmented and reorganized with a council and now determines to make its service irresistably attractive to all sorts of existing clubs and to groups of people young or old who want, or can be persuaded to get together for something more lastingly stimulating to the mind than bridge. These groups will be in the market for speakers, and, judging from the demands of recent years, eugenics is not likely to be neglected in the choice of topics.

These are samples of the direct and immediate results of the work of the Country Life Commission. The indirect results are far more numerous and perhaps more significant.

In order to study heredity, we all recognize that full account must be taken of environment. Just how far each of these two factors enters into the molding of an individual will perhaps never be ascertained, but the better one understands and appreciates the environmental helps and hindrances surrounding the subjects of his study, the better can one evaluate the influences of hereditary trends in their development and fate. In the studies of low-grade families, early in the work of the Vermont Survey, the staff were continually running against the question, "If these folks had had any sort of a chance in childhood, might they not have pulled out of the deplorable state in which a lot of them lived?" Organized charity, law enforcement leagues, supervised dances and such urban stimuli to good behavior and social welfare are scarce articles in the hamlets and open country. There is more chance of certain sorts of depravity going unchallenged in a rural section than in a populous one. At least many cases of deficiency, defectiveness and delinquency seemed to be more persistent through a succession of generations if the people were rural than if they were urban. Prejudices die harder out in the country than they do in towns ‐‐ prejudices against hospitals and institutions. Out there the people are more individualistic. The man of subnormal mind sends his nine children to the rural school and refuses to allow their transfer to the state school for feebleminded, and the school commissioners know the parents so well and so shrink from a row that they let the school teacher and the normal children suffer rather than force a commitment. It is quite possible to be too well acquainted with your neighbors for their good or yours, especially if you are not only town clerk but also owner of the general store. You stand to lose your job and your customers if you offend the few inhabitants.

So lack of backing for law enforcement, local pride, individualism and over developed intimacy all render the problems of social welfare peculiarly difficult in rural communities.

The studies of migrations that were made for the Country Life Commission by the Eugenics Survey, operating as one of the 30 divisions of the Commission, were centered upon three carefully selected towns among which conditions varied as widely as in any selection of rural towns in the state. Population trends have been especially detrimental to the size of rural towns in Vermont. If it had not been for the growth of a few of the cities and largest villages there would have been in every census since 1850 a decline in the total population of the state. A great deal of alarm has been felt and is still felt amongst the more thoughtful Vermonters because of this decline in population which they feel is also a sign of deterioration in quality. They use the expression "skimming the cream" in describing this emigration from rural sections to nearby cities or to more promising homes outside of Vermont. More and more towns are in each census reduced to the class having fewer than 1,000 individuals and if this reduction actually deprived the smallest places of the best young people as is generally believed to be the case, we should have in Vermont a backwash, a sedimentary population without sufficient ambition, energy or ability to get out or to accomplish anything where they are.

The studies that have been made over a period of three years by the Survey give a very much more hopeful prospect for the future not only of Vermont but of other parts of the country to which Vermont contributes some of its best blood. If none but the sediment of the population continued to live in Vermont and raise children there would be no longer any high grade young people to contribute to the life of our cities. But for every individual of high mental ability and physical stamina who leaves the state a dozen, a score, perhaps a hundred others who move from Vermont can carry with them only a meager endowment and their contributions can therefore amount to little or nothing. Furthermore, this is not a new condition. There is ample evidence that a similar proportion of inferior individuals from relatively inferior stock has been leaving the state for decades, and many men and women of the highest quality remained. Judging from material evidences such as taxes and the ownership of the comforts and luxuries of life, the average Vermont farmer today is in no wise inferior to his ancestors in the ability to make a living from the soil. A study of those factors and conditions that have held high grade people is as important as a study of the causes of migration.

No better eugenical program for any section of the country occurs to me than this: The improvement of living conditions, the encouragement of social and intellectual opportunities that will enrich the lives of the people, making them aware of the trends of this modern age, including the trend of Eugenics, and affording a richer environment in which to rear their children. A fine old pioneer stock deserves an environment commensurate with its quality and only in such an environment can the innate qualities of the people come to any worthy fruition. If their home surroundings are poor and life nothing better than a perpetual fight for the merest necessities, their native ambition may be so dampened as to make them indifferent to their future and that of their children. Or, if the ambition is not entirely quelled it can have no suitable outlet in these poor surroundings. No wonder then that many of the young men and women from the poor back hill farms refuse to subject themselves to the hardships, privations and rigors of the ancestral homestead.

A comparison of the occupations chosen by those who have migrated from the three towns with the occupations of those who remained behind shows very clearly how much wider a range of opportunities are opened up in the larger towns and cities than are afforded in the country. While it takes ability of a very high order to make a success of farming under even the most favorable conditions, a different kind of ability, even though it may rate higher than that of the successful farmer, may be quite inadequate to cope with the agricultural problems. In this day of specialization as for generations past the successful statesman, scientist or industrial leader who was born in a little country village might have made no success at all as a farmer. He has a certain right to those opportunities, wherever he can find them, that will give him a chance to develop his talents and his natural bent. We have, then, come to the conclusion that in rural Vermont migration is a sign not of decadence but of adjustment. The depletion of some of the smaller towns should be regarded as a healthy sign. Abandoned farms and unused overgrown hill roads are not gravestones but signboards pointing to a better adjustment to changing conditions of living.

This brings me to a word about land utilization. Reforestation, either natural or artificial, is one of the best uses to which the less fertile farms and fields should be put, and the use of land for vacation grounds offers excellent opportunity for the non-resident owner to make good use of soil and terrain too difficult for agriculture. The whole matter was thoroughly gone over by the Committee on Land Utilization of our Vermont Commission and, in conjunction with the migration studies made by the Eugenics Survey, it is plainly indicated that a program of land utilization is definitely called for in Vermont, and the same is undoubtedly as true elsewhere.

I would remind you of the long list of special committees which were set up to carry on the factfinding investigations of the Country Life Commission. It has been possible to touch upon the activities of only a few. The wealth of material gathered by these earnest, intelligent, capably guided and expertly assisted groups bears upon every phase of living conditions, physical, mental, social, spiritual, in the outposts as well as in the populous parts of Vermont. We not only have as background material for future work in Eugenics, for further studies of family trends and racial differentials, the results of this three years' research, but we have the prospect of utilizing in most practical ways the recommendations of all of these groups of workers. A small army of publicity agents has sprung up and they are putting this information into the hands of the people of the state and pointing out ways in which the state and the communities can draw upon it for their own betterment.

I am not painting a picture of Elysian fields up there in northern New England. We have no illusions in regard to the inertia that characterizes the Vermonter as well as others. We are well aware that people do not like to be disturbed out of the comfortable ruts in which they have become accustomed to move even though it may be at a snail's pace. But there are plenty of Vermonters, born or naturalized, who are ready and eager for improvement. Our committeemen, and during the past year our volunteer spokesmen, have discovered them in every section of the state-people who are willing and glad to promote promising measures of betterment for themselves, their families and their neighbors.

The quixotic dream of five years ago has already been realized in considerable part and a splendid beginning has been made towards the speeding up of the best sort of progress built upon the fine traditions of the old state.

Eugenics in Vermont, then, has already accomplished something and this accomplishment opens the way for further gains, first by giving a clearer conception of those elements in the environment of Vermont which may hinder or help human betterment and second by setting in motion the means of improving the good elements and lessening the bad.

All this may conceivably eventuate in bringing about in Vermonters an attitude of greater respect for the finest traditions of the state and for the best qualities of her native stock, a greater determination based upon more clearly thought out objectives to "raise the standards of civilization" in the country places and, in this better setting, to rear a finer race, with fewer defectives and reasonably large families of children, sturdy in body and healthy in mind.

Is this hopelessly Eutopian? I maintain that it is based on sound fundamental principles and I submit that if Eugenics is to get anywhere and do anything it must be forward looking and, in the face of accusations of impracticality, must have infinite courage. Especially must Eugenics take due account of the multitudinous elements of the environment in which it proposes to have its superior children born and reared. Such was the purpose and aim of these Background Studies in Eugenics in Vermont.