Sociologist and educator, born in Paterson, New Jersey, USA. The son of an immigrant English workman who read and thought about social and economic issues, he studied at Yale (1863 BA) and then went to Europe to study for the ministry. In 1869 he was ordained as a priest in the Protestant Episcopal Church and became a rector of the Church of the Redeemer in Morristown, NJ (1870). Desiring to speak out on social and economic issues of the day, he accepted a professorship in political and social science at Yale (1872), a post he held until his death. He was one of the most influential teachers of his era, famed for his independent thought, innovative classes, and rigorous standards. Usually labelled a proponent of laissez-faire capitalism, he was a man of strong moral convictions and opposed all forms of shoddy thinking. He saw all aspects of society as interrelated, and, as he worked on what was to be his major book, he became sidetracked on a supporting study of the underlying customs of societies through the ages, and published this as Folkways (1907). Thus his major work, Science of Society, came out in four volumes posthumously (1927), heavily edited by Yale professor Albert G Keller. A man of immense energies, in addition to his teaching he participated in community activities, working in particular to improve Connecticut's public education. In his day he was also widely known for his lively essays and public lectures, perhaps the most notable being The Forgotten Man, what a later generation would call the silent majority of average people who are never mentioned in the newspapers, but just work and save and pay.
William Graham Sumner (1840-1910), American professor at Yale College for many years where he had a reputation among students as one of the most influential teachers. He was a polymath with numerous books and essays in American history, economic history, political theory, sociology, and anthropology. Sumner's work with folkways led him to conclude that attempts at government-mandated reform were useless. Sumner was active in the intellectual promotion of free-trade classical liberalism, and in his heyday and after there were Sumner Clubs here and there.
Like many classical liberals at the time, including Edward Atkinson, Moorfield Storey, and Grover Cleveland, Sumner opposed the Spanish American War and the subsequent U.S. effort to quell the insurgency in the Philippines. In his speech "The Conquest of the United States," he lambasted imperialism as a betrayal of the small government ideals of anti-militarism, the gold standard, and free trade. According to Sumner, imperialism would enthrone a new group of "plutocrats," or businesspeople who depended on government subsidies and contracts.
In the 1870s Sumner was strongly influenced by the English evolutionary thinker Herbert Spencer; Among Sumner's students were the anthropologist Albert Galloway Keller and the economist Thorstein Bunde Veblen. "William Graham Sumner's Social Darwinism: a Reconsideration." Issn: 0018-2702 Looks at Sumner's ideas, especially as revealed in Folkways (1906) and his other writings. Contrary to the position of the kind of social Darwinism sometimes attributed to him, he insisted equally on a distinction between the "struggle for existence" of man against nature and the "competition of life" among men in society." Sumner did not really equate might and right, and did not reduce everything finally to social power. William Graham Sumner. (Twayne's United States Authors Series, no. "William Graham Sumner 'On the Concentration of Wealth.'" Journal of American History 1969 55(4): 823-832. Sumner has usually been considered a dogmatic defender of laissez-faire and of conservative social Darwinism. In this 1909 essay he shows his concern for pervasive corporate monopoly as a threat to social equality and democratic government. "William Graham Sumner and the Problem of Progress." Sumner was one of the few late-19th-century Americans to reject a belief in inevitable human progress. Influenced by his understanding of Darwinism, Malthusian theory, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics, he came to believe the ancient doctrine of cycles in human affairs and in the universe. Based on Sumner's classroom notes and other writings. "Victorians Abed: William Graham Sumner on the Family, Women and Sex." Sumner's life reveals many tensions and inconsistencies, although he generally supported the sexual status quo. "Social Darwinism and the Liberal Tradition: the Case of William Graham Sumner." Argues Sumner, drew upon themes and ideas that were firmly established in the political consciousness of Americans. When Sumner did repudiate certain fundamental premises of the liberal tradition, he did so on the grounds that the tradition was misconstrued and not because it was unsustainable. "William Graham Sumner, Social Darwinist," The New England Quarterly> 457-477 online at JSTOR, reprinted in Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860-1915 (1944). "The Forgotten Sumner." Sumner as sociologist. "William Graham Sumner: Critic of Progressive Liberalism." "William Graham Sumner as a Critic of the Spanish American War." "William Graham Sumner: Moralist as Social Scientist." Sumner shared many intellectual assumptions with 18th century Scottish moral philosophers, such as Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, and Dugald Stewart. The major reason for this ideological kinship was the historical fact that Scottish moral philosophy was one of the major sources for modern social science. Sumner's Folkways [1907] illustrates the Scottish influence. "Cultural Relativism and the Savage: the Alleged Inconsistency of William Graham Sumner." "Pauperism and Poverty: Henry George, William Graham Sumner, and the Ideological Origins of Modern American Social Science." "Sumner Versus Keller and the Social Evolutionism of Early American Sociology." ISSN: 0038-0245 Based on the contents of two recently discovered unpublished manuscripts of Sumner, concludes that he came to reject the basic premises of social evolutionism, 1900-10, and that his apparent support for the theory as stated in The Science of Society (1927, printed 17 years after Sumner's death) was actually the thought of Albert Galloway Keller, with whom he collaborated. "William Graham Sumner as an Anti-social Darwinist." Sumner clearly rejected social Darwinism in the final decade of his career, 1900-10.
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