The rapid multiplication of the unfit.
By: Victoria C. Woodhull Martin (her married name in 1891)
Published: 1891
Place of publication: 17, Hyde Park Gate, London and 149 West 70th Stree, New York City
Language: eng
Number of pages: 39
Subjects: Defective and delinquent classes; Eugenics
First sentence: One of the most fruitful sources of error is the supposition or the taking for granted that others will see and comprehend human nature as we see and comprehend it.
Description: In 2005, this book and several other difficult-to-find published speeches on eugenics by Victoria C. Woodhull were republished in high-quality facsimile in a collection entitled: Lady Eugenist: Feminist Eugenics in the Speeches and Writings of Victoria Woodhull.  ISBN: 978-1-1-58742-040-5 (pb) and 978-1058742-041-2 (hb). The collection includes:


Children--Their Rights and Privileges (1871); Press Notices (1869-1882, publ. 1890. An excellent source of background on her speeches on eugenics in the early 1870s); The Garden of Eden (1875, publ. 1890); Stirpiculture (1888); Humanitarian Government ((1890); The Scientific Propagation of the Human Race (1893). 

Lady Eugenist also includes other useful background information and commentary, including newspaper articles from the period.
Notes: Traditional histories link the beginning of eugenics to Francis Galton's 1865 article in Macmillan's Magazine on "Hereditary Talent and Character." But Galton did little to promote the idea until the early 1900s. In contrast, Victoria Woodhull promoted the idea (then called stirpiculture) in a series of speeches in the U.S. in the early 1870s and later in UK after she moved there. A good case can be made that through her published speeches Woodhull was one of the first and most important popularizers of eugenics in the English-speaking world. Since Woodhull had a well-deserved reputation for radicalism, it is likely that mainstream eugenists downplayed the role she played to stress that of Galton, a widely respected scientist. More investigation needs to be made into her role.


This pamphlet, "The Rapid Multiplication of the Unfit," perhaps got the widest circulation of all her published speeches. A better representation of what she was saying in the early 1870s can be found in her, "The Scientific Propagation of the Human Race," which she says on the first page was "A Lecture Delivered at Carnegie Music Hall, New York City, November 20th, 1893 and throughout America, from 1870 to 1876."  Note too that her ideas on eugenics seemed to be based more on ideas about human breeding circulating among utopian communities in the Midwest when she was going up there than on Galton or Darwinian thinking. She hints at that in the first paragraph of "Scientific Propagation." In the 1870s, her ideas on eugenics were also closely linked to her radical ideas about marriage and family life, as well as folk ideas about influences on a mother during pregnancy impacting her baby.

Her major published speeches on eugenics have been republished in high-quality facsimile in Lady Eugenist (2005, details below) along with some additional material, including articles from newspapers of that period.