Which of the following issues of the period was sumner most likely concerned within the excerpt?

William Graham Sumner

October 30, 1840 — April 12, 1910

“Civil liberty is the status of the man who is guaranteed by law and civil institutions the exclusive employment of all his own powers for his own welfare.” –W. G. Sumner

William Gra

In 1873 Sumner entered into the political arena, serving as New Haven alderman until 1876. In the fall of 1877, he sat in on the electoral commission to investigate fraud in New Orleans during the 1876 presidential election. Deeply disheartened by both experiences, Sumner curbed his political activities to an extensive term on the Connecticut State Board of Education (1882-1910).

As a classical economist, Sumner supported an extreme laissez-faire policy, opposing any governmental actions that obstructed natural economic affairs. His “A History of American Currency” (1874) supported the preservation of a sound currency against the use of silver. In 1878 Sumner turned his attention to the turbulence in the labor movement, contesting labor unions as harmful monopolies. On August 22, Sumner testified before a select committee of the U.S. House of Representatives concerned with investigating the Causes of the General Depression in Labor and Business. In “Protectionism: The –ism that Teaches that Waste Makes Wealth” (1885) and "Lectures on the History of Protection" (1883), which he delivered before the International Free-Trade Alliance, he defined the tariff as a tax that benefits some Americans over others.

In the early 1880s, Sumner received criticism from Yale President Noah Porter for the use of Herbert Spencer’s Study of Sociology (1873) as a classroom textbook. Although he agreed to use other texts, the ensuing battle for academic freedom gained wide publicity and popularity for Sumner. In 1883 Sumner published “What the Social Classes Owe to Each Other”, an attack on attempts to regulate the economy and assuage social problems. (also see excerpts from the essay here and here)

After an extensive absence from public life due to a decline in health, Sumner returned to the public eye as Vice President of the Anti-Imperialist League in 1899. His speech, “The Conquest of the United States by Spain”, was delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Yale University on January 16, 1899. During this time he was also a member of the Philippine Independence Committee. In his best-known encyclopedic book Folkways (1906), Sumner added the terms “folkways” and “mores” to the vocabularies of American sociologists. He believed that these were the most powerful influences on human behavior, even when irrational. A Social Darwinist and Conservative in thought, Sumner worked continuously in charting the evolution of human customs, folkways and mores. He believed that these forces, developed naturally through the course of evolution, made any attempts for social reform useless. Sumner advocated that humanity could only survive in an environment untouched by attempts to change the “natural laws of social development”. Trained in the ideals of inductive empiricism, Sumner’s concepts were based on observations of particulars. Sumner defined the concept of ethnocentrism, the attitudes of superiority concerning one’s own group in comparison to others.

In 1905 Sumner provided the following autobiographical sketch for the publication A History of the Class of 1863, Yale College:

I was born at Paterson, N.J., October 30, 1840. My father, Thomas Sumner, was born at Walton-le-Dale, Lancashire, England, May 6, 1808. He came to the United States in 1836. My mother was Sarah Graham. She was born in Oldham, England, in 1819, and was brought to the United States by her parents in 1825. She died when I was eight years old. This is about all I know of my ancestry. My father told me that he had seen his own great-grandfather, who was a weaver in Lancashire. They were all artisans and members of the wages class. It is safe to say that I am the first of them who ever learned Latin and algebra. My grandfather had a good trade, which was ruined by machinery. On account of this family disaster, my father was in every respect a self-educated man, and was obliged to come to America. His principles and habits of life were the best possible. His knowledge was wide, and his judgment excellent. He belonged to the class of men, of whom Caleb Garth in Middlemarch is the type. In early life I accepted, from books and other people, some views and opinions which differed from his. At the present time, in regard to those matters, I hold with him and not with the others.

In the year after I was born my father went prospecting through Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York. He came back convinced that, if a man would live as poorly and educate his children as badly in the East as he would have to in the West, he could do as well in the East. He moved to New England, lived in New Haven a year or two, and settled in Hartford about 1845. I was educated in the public schools of that city. I was clerk in a store for two years, but went back to school to prepare for college.

After graduating I went at once to Europe. I passed the winter of 1863-64 in Geneva, Switzerland, studying French and Hebrew. In April, 1864, I went to Gottingen, where I studied ancient languages and history. In April, 1866, I went to Oxford, where I studied Anglican theology. In that year I was elected tutor at Yale and entered upon the duties in September.

I was ordained a Deacon in the Protestant Episcopal Church at Trinity Church, New Haven, December 27, 1867. I resigned the tutorship in March, 1869, to become assistant to the Rector of Calvary Church, New York City. From September, 1870, to September, 1872, I was Rector of the Church of the Redeemer, at Morristown, N.J.

In June, 1872, I was elected Professor of Political and Social Sciences in Yale College. My life has been spent since that time in trying to fulfil the duties of that position. From 1873 to 1876 I was an alderman of the city of New Haven. In 1876 I was one of the “visiting statesmen,” who were sent to New Orleans to try to find out what kind of a presidential election they had in Louisiana in that year. This is the whole of my experience in politics. I found out that I was likely to do more harm in politics than almost any other kind of man, because I did not know the rules of the game and did not want to learn them. Therefore, the adepts at it could play with me in more senses than one. My experience, however, has been very valuable to me. It has enabled me to gauge the value of the talk we hear about “civics” and “citizenship.” I turned back to the studies connected with my college position, and have devoted myself entirely to them. Those studies have expanded so rapidly and greatly that I have been compelled during the whole thirty-two years to narrow the range of my work more and more. I have renounced one branch after another in order to concentrate my efforts on what I could hope to master. In this process I have had to throw away a great amount of work, which I could never hope to finish. When I was fifty years old I broke down in health. I have only partly recovered, and have been obliged to limit my interests as much as possible to the college work. I am now trying to bring into form for publication the results of my studies in the science of society. If life and strength hold out, this will be the sum of what I shall have accomplished. This life of a professor is so simple and monotonous that I know of no other “history” of it that is possible, than what I have just written. No other life could have been so well suited to my taste as this. My relations with students and graduates have always been of the pleasantest, and I think that there can be few relations in life which can give greater satisfaction than these.

Even after suffering a stroke in 1907, Sumner’s passion for sociology did not waver. He was elected President of the American Sociological Society in 1908, serving as its second President for two years. Sumner delivered two Presidential Addresses during his term: "The Family and Social Change" (1908) and "Religion and the Mores" (1909). Braving a snowstorm on his way to deliver his second address in New York, Sumner collapsed and fell ill.

Sumner died on April 12, 1910 in Englewood, New Jersey. Upon his death, an obituary was published in the American Journal of Sociology. 

“The forgotten man…He works, he votes, generally he prays, but his chief business in life is to pay.” – W.G. Sumner

For more information on William Graham Sumner, you may find the following sources useful:

1. Bannister, Robert C. 2000. “Sumner, William Graham.” American National Biography Online. Retrieved March 14, 2003 (//www.anb.org/articles/14/14-00611.html).
2. Encyclopedia.com. 2002. “Sumner, William Graham.” Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. 2003. Retrieved March 6, 2003 (//www.encyclopedia.com/html/s/sumner-w1.asp).
3. Fonseca, Goncalo L. and Leanne Ussher. nd. “William Graham Sumner, 1840-1910.” History of Economic Thought, Retrieved October 19, 2004 (//cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/sumner.htm).
4. GMW. 2003. “William Graham Sumner: Excerpt from: The Absurd Effort to Make the World Over, March 1894.” From Revolution to Recontruction…and What Happened Afterwards, Retrieved October 21, 2004 (//odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/D/1876-1900/reform/sumner.htm).
5. Halsall, Paul. 1998. “Modern History Sourcebook: William Graham Sumner (1840-1910): The Challenge of Facts.” Fordham, Retrieved April 11, 2003 (//www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1914sumner.html).
6. Keller, A. G. 1910. “William Graham Sumner.” American Journal of Sociology.
7. Landry, Peter. 1998. “The Forgotten Man: By William Graham Sumner.” Essays: Picked by Blupete, Retrieved October 21, 2004 (//www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/Best/SumnerForgotten.htm).
8. Palmisano, Joseph M. ed. 2001. “Sumner, William Graham (1840-1910): American Clergyman and Professor.” Pp. 660-661 in World of Sociology. Farmington Hills, MI: The Gale Group.
9. Roth, David M. 2003. “William Graham Sumner.” CT Heritage, Retrieved April 11, 2003 (//www.ctheritage.org/encyclopedia/ct1865_1929/sumner.htm).
10. U-S-History.com. 2002. “Capitalism in the Gilded Age: Social Darwinism.” Online Highways, LLC, Retrieved October 21, 2004 (//www.u-s-history.com/pages/h843.html). [also contains information on Herbert Spencer]

Obituary

Written by A.G. Keller, in The American Journal of Sociology, 15(6), 832-835.

As one contemplates the close of a long, full, and many-sided life of usefulness, like that of William Graham Sumner, he feels powerless to reduce his crowding impressions to order.  To attain the perspective of such a life demands much reflection and study; for no living man has accompanied Sumner through the several phases of his intellectual evolution, so as to be able to afford an intimate survey of the paths he  traveled  and  the labors he wrought. Hence in any brief preliminary notice of his passing one can scarcely do more than to take some phase of his career and seek to give an. idea of its beginning and its salient features. In a sense this task seems easier from the point of view of the sociologist than from that of the economist or political scientist, for it would seem at first sight that  the sociologist needs consider only the last period of Professor Sumner's life and work. But, looked at more  understandingly, the career  of the man we mourn was that of a sociologist  throughout.  His was not the type of mind that could remain contented within the bonds of any special subdivision of the social sciences. He felt too keenly the complexity of societal  life, and  the multiplicity of factors entering into its evolution to stop in his studies short  of the effort to develop a "science of society." And so,  in a sense, the endeavor to treat of Sumner the sociologist is the attempt to deal with the general case.

This cannot be done in this time and place, but it is possible in a few words to indicate in outline some of the aspects of Sumner's career most interesting to sociologists. As a  young man he was captivated by Herbert Spencer and felt that here at last was an intellectual emancipation and a satisfaction not before experienced. Filled  with  the  zeal  of  the  truth-disseminator, he prevailed at length against conservative opposition and began to teach social science or sociology of the Spencerian type, becoming the pioneer  in  America  of  sociological  instruction. But the demands upon  him of  his large and  enthusiastic  classes  in political economy, and the exigencies  of  tariff-controversy,  kept Professor Sumner from the studies he was coming to prefer, and it was only after a severe  breakd9wn  in  the  early  nineties that he definitely retired from the teaching of political  economy and gave himself over entirely to the science of society. There ensued those years of  quiet,  incessant  study,  part of  the  results of which are to be seen in the Folkways; it was this period of retirement from the eye of the public and even of scholars which caused some to think that Sumner's career closed in' the middle nineties and others to regret his withdrawal from political econ­ omy. The publication of the Folkways somewhat startled the ad­ herents of these views. I do not need to speak of this volume to sociologists, but it is clear that it disposed of both theories con­ cerning Sumner's latter years; the awe-inspiring bibliography revealed to the scholar long hours of herculean toil, and the freshness and strength and originality  of  the  theoretic  part showed  the old-time vigorous mind  in characteristic action.  And it must be understood that during these latter years since the breakdown before referred to, Sumner had never been a thor­ oughly well man; many is the time he has moaned to me about having to "go to bed with the chickens," and the like.

In the preface to the Folkways a certain amount of bio­ graphical matter occurs-this I may, perhaps, somewhat amplify. Sumner wrote along on his projected Science of  Society  for  several years till he came to the topic of the ''Mores." Here he grounded for some time, finally working out what he called "a chapter  of  two  hundred   thousand   words."   But  by  this  time he had convinced himself that the idea of the  folkways  was entirely fundamental to his conception of any science of society; after telling me from time to time of his perplexities, he said one day : "That chapter is too long for a chapter; guess  I'll make  a book of it." Such was the genesis of the Folkways.

Professor Sumner felt that this would be his last book; the labors of composition expended upon it tired him excessively. Parts of it were  written  over  seven  times,  or  even  more. Respecting the general treatise . he used to say somewhat de­ spondingly that its completion meant less  to  him  because  it  was only one of five or six books  which  he  was  ready  to  write  if  he had the strength.  But  the  sense  of  emancipation  which  he  felt when the Folkways was finally completed was so great, and the reaction  from  the  toil  spent  upon  it  was  so  strong  that  he scarcely  touched  the  partially  written  general  treatise  again. Several topics originally designed to go into the Folkways  ,vere treated in the Forum, in the Yale Review, and in the presidential address recently  printed  in  this  Journal;  but  the  man  was  tired out with his  lifetime  of  incredible  mental  toil,  and  could  not arouse  himself  to  do  any  more.  So  he  "settled  down  to  loaf."  His  last  months  before  his  collapse   in   New   York   were   spent in a very restful and happy  way;  he  was  deeply  touched  by  the truly  magnificent  ovation  attending  his  induction  as   a   Yale doctor of laws at the Commencement of June, 1909, and  by  the stream of grateful  and  affectionate  letters  that  flowed  to  him  all the following summer.  He  joked  on  that  Commencement  occa­ sion, to  the  delight  of  all  concerned,  about  his  "walking  the plank" and "joining Carnegie's  kindergarten,"  and  after  his retirement  used  to  speak  in  most  enthusiastic  terms  about   the joys  of  the  emeritus,  instancing-late  breakfasts  as  one  of   the chief of these.

I have wandered from the subject of Sumner as a sociologist; but most of us know of his views along that line, and a full treatment of his place in the science cannot now  be  written. Briefly, he was of the school of Spencer; his great initial inspira­ tion came from the Study of Sociology.  With  Spencer  he reckoned Lippert as an influence of  the  highest  significance  in his sociological thinking; and at  one  time  he added  Ratzenhofer to these two, but later, I think, was inclined to  rate  him  less highly, and to believe that Spencer and Lippert were the domi­  nant influences upon his own work. Sumner  hated  metaphysics and everything connected with it, and took little stock in psy­ chology; he always stated, rather truculently at times, that  his  work rested upon ethnography and history. He never took to "practical sociology" at all, and in the effort to distinguish his conception of sociology from the several divagations which the term has come to cover in  the  years  since Spencer's  beginnings he was accustomed for  some time  to  use the term  "societology." It was his idea that more investigation and  less theorizing should  be done in sociology; this view comes out in his answer to the questionnaire propounded  several  months  ago  by  this  Journal. In that same connection  he  remarked,  in  his  usual  effort  to avoid what he called "tampering with  other  people's  business," that he did not know how sociology  at  Yale  would  be  taught after his retirement. He really  knew  as  well  as  I  do  that  we shall continue to teach here  what  the  boys call "Sumnerology." For to us who have worked side by side with him,  there  is  mingled with the sorrow for the warm-hearted and considerate mentor and friend the conviction that  we  have  in  Sumner's system of the science of society the  work  of  a  master-mind  of the first order.