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In Praise of Gibson's 'Little New Deal' By DICK HATHAWAY

Historians squirm in utter discomfort when asked to reduce the complicated and seamless fabric of history into Time style "Please nominate the most significant person" and/or most significant event or trend or movement in twentieth century Vermont." We prefer nuance and complexity over the raw necessity to choose one person and one trend.

I decided to make a virtue out of necessity, by completing an informal and unscientific survey of my colleagues and acquaintances. I would at least find comfort in numbers, and perhaps even pick up an unorthodox reply or two.

Their considered responses to the most significant person resulted in a surprise nomination. To be sure, many suggested some of the more obvious candidates. On the literary and whimsical side Robert Frost and Fred Tuttle proved popular choices; on the political side, nominations of Calvin Coolidge, George Aiken, Richard Snelling, Philip Hoff and Madeleine Kunin.

But two of my colleagues (separately) suggested the surprise nomination, which I found both provocative and defensible: Gov. Ernest W. Gibson, Jr. He challenged the traditional rules of succession and toppled the Proctor wing of the venerable Republican Party in the famous primary of 1946. Moreover, his governorship resulted in marked adaptation of New Deal-style governmental initiatives into state government.

He campaigned on his pledge to be an "aggressive, progressive leader," and he most assuredly was. The twin themes of modernization and progress marked his inaugural speeches. Gibson supported enhanced initiatives for education, more pay for teachers, and teacher colleges. His "Little New Deal" advocated a graduated income tax, supported a state Department of Health, touted "Vermont's Year-Round Recreational Climate," and initiated the Vermont State Police. In brief, we simply cannot comprehend contemporary Vermont without noting the remarkable contributions of Governor Gibson from 1947 through 1950.

As for the most significant event, or trend or movement, my survey results were all over the map. Some folks took the easy way out and suggested the great flood of 1927 - a plausible if not terribly imaginative choice. Others urged the coming of the bulk tank, which surely was a key (albeit not the only) factor that accelerated the decline of the small family farm in Vermont after mid-century.

A few nominated the great in-migration of the sixties and seventies, as ex-urbanities relocated to Vermont as part of the often communal back-to-the-land movement that would reconfigure traditional notions of the typical Vermonter. Several urged the insidious but persistent phenomenon of urban sprawl as a trend that was seemingly unstoppable despite a plethora of land-use and environmental stipulations.

But the trend that causes me the greatest concern is this: the tendency over the most recent decades to create two Vermonts, separate and unequal. The first Vermont is relatively prosperous, enjoys upward mobility, and is connected to the sophisticated apparatus of the ever-burgeoning Internet. The second "other Vermont," is an underclass population, literally as well as functionally "out of sight."

Often eking out an existence in the back hills, living in mobile homes, this population (never recognized in the glossy tourist brochures) is increasingly marginalized by technology and a communications boom that continues to change Vermont and link it intimately to post-industrial culture.

As historian Allen Davis reminds us in just published "Vermont Voices" (a documentary history of Vermont), the "other Vermont" represents folks out of the prosperity/communications/Internet loop. At best, this population makes it day by day on subsistence income, and all too often on less. If it is the obligation of responsive government to address this persistent underclass, perhaps it is high time for another Governor Ernest Gibson.

Dick Hathaway teaches history in the Adult Degree Program of Vermont College of Norwich University.