Sumner, William Graham

Sumner, William Graham, 1840–1910, American sociologist and political economist, b. Paterson, N.J., grad. Yale, 1863, and studied in Germany, in Switzerland, and at Oxford. He was ordained an Episcopal minister and from 1872 was professor of political and social science at Yale. In economics he advocated a policy of extreme laissez-faire, strongly opposing any government measures that he thought interfered with the natural economics of trade. As a sociologist he did valuable work in charting the evolution of human customs—folkways and mores. He concluded that the power of these forces, developed in the course of human evolution, rendered useless any attempts at social reform. He also originated the concept of ethnocentrism, a term now commonly used, to designate attitudes of superiority about one's own group in comparison with others. His major work was Folkways (1907). The massive Science of Society by Sumner and Albert G. Keller, a colleague, was not completed and published until 1927 (4 vol.; Vol. IV by Sumner, Keller, and M. R. Davie).

Bibliography

See H. E. Starr, William Graham Sumner (1925); A. G. Keller, Reminiscences (Mainly Personal) of William Graham Sumner (1933); W. G. Green, Sumner Today (1940, repr. 1971); R. G. McCloskey, American Conservatism in the Age of Enterprise (1951, repr. 1964); M. R. Davie, William Graham Sumner (1963).

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Sumner, William Graham (1840–1910) sociologist, educator; born in Paterson, N.J. Son of an immigrant English workman who read and thought about social and economic issues, he took a B.A. from Yale in 1863 and then went to Europe to study for the ministry. In 1869 he was ordained as a priest in the Protestant Episcopal Church and by 1870 he was rector of the Church of the Redeemer in Morristown, N.J. Desiring to speak out on social and economic issues of the day, in 1872 he accepted a professorship in political and social science at Yale, 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 labeled 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; he published this as Folkways (1907). Thus his major work, Science of Society, came out in four volumes posthumously in 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 one called "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."