  Eugenicists had two-fold aims: to encourage people with various desirable traits, e.g., health, intelligence, character, to reproduce together to create good births (what is known as “positive” eugenics), and to end certain diseases and disabilities by discouraging or preventing those with characteristics considered undesirable from reproducing (what is known as “negative” eugenics). In the United States, programs to encourage positive eugenics involved the creation of “Fitter Family Fairs” in which families competed for prizes at local county fairs, much in the way that livestock is judged for conformation and physical dexterity (Stern 2002). Negative eugenics took the form of encouraged or forced sterilizations of men and, particularly, women deemed unfit to reproduce (in the language of the day, this included individuals who were “poor, mentally insane, feeble-minded, idiots, drunken” and more). Much of eugenics ideology was reductionistic in nature, with many eugenicists assuming that social and behavioral conditions, such as poverty, vagrancy, or prostitution, were inherited as genetic traits rather than shared as common social situations. Nonetheless proponents of eugenic policies were aware of the interplay between biology and the environment, even if they were not very concerned with differentiating the various contributory factors (Dyck 2014). Social problems such as alcoholism or diseases related to mental health were understood to have a genetic component that could lead to difficulties in taking appropriate care of children (For an interesting discussion of the relevant social moral epistemology, see Buchanan 2007).