Sumner, William Graham 1840-1910

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SUMNER, William Graham 1840-1910

PERSONAL: Born October 30, 1840, in Paterson, NJ; died April 12, 1910, in Englewood, NJ; son of Thomas (a mechanic) and Sarah (Graham) Sumner; married Jeannie (Whittemore) Elliott, 1871; children: Henry, Eliot, Graham. Education: Yale College, graduated, 1863; attended University of Göttingen and Oxford University, 1866.

CAREER: Yale College, New Haven, CT, tutor, 1866-69, professor of polical and social science, 1872-1910; Calvary Church, New York, NY, ordained priest, 1869; Church of the Redeemer, Morristown, NJ, church rector, 1870. Member, New Haven board of aldermen, 1873-76, and Connecticut State Board of Education, 1882-1910.

MEMBER: American Sociological Society (former vice president; president, 1908-09).

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

A History of American Currency: With Chapters on the English Bank Restriction and Austrian Paper Money: To Which Is Appended "The Bullion Report," Henry Holt & Co. (New York, NY), 1874.

Lectures on the History of Protection in the United States: Delivered before the International Free-Trade Alliance, G. P. Putnam's Sons (New York, NY), 1877.

Andrew Jackson as a Public Man, Houghton, Mifflin and Company (Boston, MA), 1882.

What Social Classes Owe to Each Other, Harper & Bros. (New York, NY), 1883.

Protectionism: The Ism Which Teaches That Waste Makes Wealth, Henry Holt & Co. (New York, NY), 1885.

Alexander Hamilton, Dodd, Mead & Co. (New York, NY), 1890.

The Financier and the Finances of the American Revolution, two volumes, Dodd, Mead & Co. (New York, NY), 1891.

Robert Morris, Dodd, Mead & Co. (New York, NY), 1892.

A History of Banking in All the Leading Nations: Comprising the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Austro-Hungary, France, Italy, Belgium, Spain, Switzerland, Portugal, Roumania, Russia, Holland: the Scandinavian Nation, Canada, China, Japan, four volumes, Journal of Commerce and Commercial Bulletin (New York, NY), 1896.

Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals, Ginn & Co. (Boston, MA), 1906.

(With Albert G. Keller) The Science of Society, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1927.

COLLECTED ESSAYS

Collected Essays in Political and Social Science, Henry Holt & Co. (New York, NY), 1885.

War, and Other Essays, edited by Albert G. Keller, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1911.

Earth-Hunger and Other Essays, edited by Albert G. Keller, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1913.

The Challenge of Facts, and Other Essays, edited by Albert G. Keller, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1914.

The Forgotten Man, and Other Essays, edited by Albert G. Keller, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1918.

Selected Essays of William Graham Sumner, edited by Albert G. Keller and Maurice R. Davie, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1934.

Sumner Today: Selected Essays of William Graham Sumner, with Comments by American Leaders, edited by Maurice R. Davie, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1940.

The Forgotten Man's Almanac: Rations of Common Sense from William Graham Sumner, edited by Albert G. Keller, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1943.

Social Darwinism: Selected Essays of William Graham Sumner, edited by Stow Persons, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1963.

The Conquest of the United States, Spain, and Other Essays, edited by Murray Polner, Henry Regnery (Chicago, IL), 1965.

On Liberty, Society, and Politics: The Essential Essays of William Graham Sumner, edited by Robert C. Bannister, Liberty Press (Indianapolis, IN), 1992.

Contributor to periodicals, including Nation, North American Review, Index, Forum, Popular Science Monthly, and Yale Review.

SIDELIGHTS: William Graham Sumner was known by many titles: economist, educator, social scientist, and conservative theorist. He is most commonly remembered as one of the earliest proponents of sociology in America, a man vehemently opposed to imperialism, and as a defender of laissez-faire capitalism and individualism. Throughout his lifetime he penned and published numerous books, essays, and articles concerning socialism; during one three-year period, he wrote two books and sixty articles. His most famous writing, Folkways, is considered a classic in the field of American sociology.

Sumner was born in New Jersey to English immigrants in 1840. In an unsuccessful attempt to prosper, Thomas Sumner moved his family westward, but eventually returned to the East, settling in Hartford, Connecticut. William took advantage of this location and attended nearby Yale College, where he graduated in 1863. Following graduation, he studied abroad at the universities of Göttingen and Oxford. He then returned to Yale, where he was a tutor from 1866 to 1869. It was during this time he became an ordained priest and was made assistant to the rector of Calvary Church in New York. In 1870 he became rector of the Church of the Redeemer in Morristown, New Jersey, and in April of the following year, married Jeannie Whittemore Elliott, with whom he had three sons. Sumner first met Jeannie at a party in the early 1860s, but his interests were spurned as she developed a relationship with a fellow classmate. By his senior year, Sumner was seriously involved with another woman who died shortly before graduation. He and Jeannie met again in 1869, and this time the relationship took. Although he kept his personal life private, his published writings reveal his true beliefs about marriage: monogamy and family were the cornerstones of morality and civilized values.

By all accounts a competent preacher, Sumner's interests nevertheless turned to matters of social and economic import, issues he could not address in the pulpit. Instead, he found himself wrestling with two issues that would pervade his academic life until his death. The first was the conflict between religion and science, wherein he tried to find a middle ground. He shocked many of his Congregationalists when he found "no great fault" with Darwin, Huxley, or Spencer in their sociological writings. Though he admitted that these men may be wrong in their theories, he deemed their methods sincere and honest.

The second issue Sumner wrestled with was the conflict between tradition and progress. Several of his sermons addressed this topic, and though he recognized the "true moral authority" of traditions, he warned parishioners against the blind acceptance of "old errors" and "worn-out falsehoods." Sumner's beliefs offered no easy answers, but rather, caused him to remain undecided about such matters throughout his life. On the one hand, he believed that progress needed to be kept in check by tradition and history. On the other, he professed a deep commitment to individual freedom.

Sumner was called back to Yale in 1872 to fill the newly created chair of political and social science. He readily accepted this post and became increasingly active in his new life in New Haven. Within a year he was elected alderman for the city, a position he held for four years. He also became an honorary member of the New Haven Chamber of Commerce. Nationally, he joined the American Social Science Association and served on its finance committee. He also became involved in politics and even testified before a Congressional Committee investigating labor unrest in 1878.

Extracurricular activities did not interfere with Sumner's job at Yale. Teaching was his first business, and he commanded great respect. His students benefited from his teaching style, which was straight to the point, honest, and unsentimental. Deemed one of the most effective teachers of his generation, it was not uncommon for Sumner's lecture hall to contain instructors from other colleges, eager to experience first-hand what all the fuss was about.

Sumner continually tried to broaden the curriculum to include not only the classics but also more modern texts. He found himself in the spotlight when the president of Yale forbade him to use Herbert Spencer's The Study of Sociology in the classroom. Sumner valiantly fought against this decree and won. His victory brought him much attention in the newspapers.

Once freed from the restrictions of his clerical position, Sumner forged ahead in an attempt to demolish those economic and political concepts he deemed evil and unnatural. He waged his war through public speaking appearances, but even more so through his writings. His essays garnered great attention throughout the country for their flawless analysis and deep commitment. No social question was safe from Sumner's pen; he addressed topics such as equality, protectionism, rights, and civil-service reform. A formidable opponent of socialism, Sumner constructed arguments that are still considered most difficult to refute.

Sumner's first book, A History of American Currency, advocates a sound monetary system. Though he initially promoted only a sound currency, by 1878 he was publicly thrashing bimetallism. His next book, Lectures on the History of Protection, addresses free trade. In it Sumner argues that the protection tariff is, in reality, a tax benefit given to some Americans over others.

Sumner's experience in politics left him disillusioned, and he wrote in his 1903 Autobiographical Sketch, "I found out that I was more likely to do more harm than good in politics … because I did not know the rules of the game and did not want to learn them." Sumner turned his back on politics completely, refusing even to vote in the 1880 election.

With politics behind him, Sumner's attention and interest shifted to labor and big business, and his writing reflects this change. He wrote numerous essays about the bloody railway strikes of 1877 for the Independent and the Forum. He denounced plutocracy as a political form that heralds an "increasing thirst for luxury." As was his style, Sumner did not mince words when he wanted to make his point, and as he turned from public policy to social theory his fearlessness brought him national attention.

His career as a social scientist and theorist began in the 1870s with his attack on Henry George's Progress and Poverty. It was also with this attack that Sumner became known, mistakenly, as a social Darwinist. Henry George attacked the common population theories of Thomas Robert Malthus, which, in Sumner's words, state: "Human beings tend to multiply beyond the power of a limited area of land to support life, under a given stage of the arts, and a given standard of living." Sumner further explained that the struggle for existence pits the individual against the wilderness. He believed that socialists confuse the competition of life with the struggle for existence, and in one essay, argues that "The law of the survival of the fittest was not made by man. We can only, by interfering with it, produce the survival of the unfittest." And so the connection to social Darwinism was made. It was around this time that Sumner was also in the spotlight for insisting on using Herbert Spencer's The Study of Sociology to teach his class, an act that only deepened the identity of Sumner as a social Darwinist.

The New York Times first accused Sumner of misusing Darwinism to justify a dog-eat-dog social order in 1883, and Sumner's critics quickly jumped on the bandwagon. He printed several apologies on the subject, insisting that he ascribed to Darwinism as accused. Sumner insisted on the distinction between the social competition for life and the struggle for existence because he believed that a society's well being is directly related to the social and economic rules it adheres to. In short, Sumner believed that all social behavior conforms to natural law.

After years under a grueling work schedule, Sumner experienced a nervous breakdown and took a two-year sabbatical overseas. He returned to his duties at Yale in 1892, but the collapse had taken a permanent toll on his energy. Between 1876 and 1890 Sumner published 108 articles and seven books—during the five years immediately following his breakdown he published four articles and two books. Then, in 1896 he wrote another twelve articles and a book. Folkways, the book for which he is remembered, was still to come.

In the 1890s American imperialism was on the rise, much to Sumner's dismay, and he focused his energy on the anti-imperialist cause for much of the decade. During this time, he contemplated not only the future of the United States, but also the past. The result of this shift in focus was Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals, published in 1906. According to Joseph M. Palmisano in World of Sociology, the premise of this monumental work is that human groups develop constellations of habits and norms that coincide with their environmental realities. "Folkways are designated as those informal group habits that emerge through trial and error. In contrast, mores are institutionalized norms that nearly all members of the group abide." Sumner argued that folkways tend to inhibit the potential for progress.

Although the text is considered a classic today, Folkways did not receive the warm welcome one might expect. Contemporary reviewers faulted its methodology and resulting political implications. With the passing of time, however, and the advantage of hindsight, Folkways rose considerably in prestige. Robert Park wrote in the late 1920s, as quoted on the Swarthmore College Web site: "The effect of his researches was to lay a foundation for more realistic, more objective, and more systematic studies in the field of human nature and society than had existed up to that time."

Sumner's final years were spent building the American Sociological Society, now the American Sociological Association. He was elected first vice president, then president. After making his way to New York during a snowstorm to deliver the presidential address at the annual meeting in December, 1909, Sumner suffered a stroke. He died four months later on April 10, 1910.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Armentano, Dominick T., The Political Economy of William Graham Sumner, University Microfilms (Ann Arbor, MI), 1967.

Dictionary of American Biography, American Council of Learned Societies, 1928-1936.

Dixwell, George Basil, Premises of Free Trade Examined; Also Review of Professor Sumner's Speech before the Tariff Commission, J. Wilson & Son (Cambridge, MA), 1883.

Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd edition, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1998.

Keller, Alert G., Reminiscences of William Graham Sumner, H. Milford, Oxford University Press (London, England), 1933.

Palmisano, Joseph M., editor, World of Sociology, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2001.