Eugenic–Conservationist Discourse in the New Jersey Pine Barrens

In the influential eugenic tract The Kallikak Family (1912), Henry Herbert Goddard and fieldworker Elizabeth S. Kite document the prevalence of feeblemindedness in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Overwhelmingly, they “diagnose” inferior intelligence as correlated to subsistence practices—a reliance on collecting food and materials from the wild, only as needed and in concert with the seasons. Ultimately, Goddard and Kite argue that the subjects of their research—the Pineys, as they call them—are too unintelligent and morally corrupt to be permitted to reproduce. By reading Goddard and Kite’s work through the lens of a eugenic–conservationist discourse, I argue that their desire to control the reproduction of the Pines natives stems from a culturally embedded, conservationist drive to preserve untouched wilderness for the elite. While the subsistence practices in the Pines are far more environmentally sustainable than the lifestyles that support the middle and upper classes, an ideology of pure wilderness leads to the Pineys’ demonization in ecological terms. To conclude, I will consider how John McPhee’s work of literary journalism, The Pine Barrens (1968), reveals a shift in depictions of subsistence living in the Pines. McPhee reframes subsistence practices as an alternative to environmentally exploitative behavior. Traces of the older eugenic–conservationist discourse can still be found in McPhee’s text, however, revealing the persistence of Progressive Era attitudes about poverty, environmentalism, and population management.