Other chapters are on the state Constitution, the General Assembly, special interest politics, budgets and taxes, criminal law, law enforcement, corrections, civil and human rights, education, health care, welfare, cultural agencies, land use, natural resources, transportation, business, labor and industry, local government and federal government. This is not the type of book that you curl up with and read page by page. But I was surprised by how much interested me. Some chapters I read in their entirety, but even those that I had figured would not interest me had something that did. Because as Smallwood says, the change has been everywhere, in every area of our state.
Nothing is as it was.
And that comes through in every chapter. More change has come to Vermont in the 34 years since 1965 than had happened in the preceding 200 years. The state population, which had grown by a mere 75,000 between 1860 and 1960, has grown by 200,000 since 1960. The number of dairy farms dropped from 11,000 in 1950 to 3,709 in 1974 and just 1,900 in 1996. The amount of land used for farming dropped from 60 percent in 1950 to 22 percent in 1992.