ROSS, EDWARD ALSWORTH 1866 - 1951

Professor and Social Activist

Background

The progressive movement found one of its greatest proponents in Edward Alsworth Ross, a gargantuan man with what contemporaries referred to as a "magnificent" head. He stood six feet six inches tall, and his size mimicked the way the professor loomed over the Progressive Era, always willing to contribute a juicy quote for newspapermen or another article outlining his positions. Professor Ross was a genuinely decent and thoughtful man. He was extremely loyal and generous with his graduate students and colleagues. For years he counseled and gave financial assistance to a worthy scholar who lost his post at a university because of his outspokenly radical views. Ross grew up in the Midwest as an orphan and was raised by many concerned groups. He attended Coe College, a small school where he emerged as a natural leader. He graduated in 1886 and was noted for his intellectual prowess and contagious exuberance. Ross left Iowa in 1888 for graduate study in Germany but returned to the United States and received a Ph.D. in political economy with minors in history and philosophy from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Spread of Democracy

Ross was an outstanding teacher and held several high-profile posts at universities, including Stanford, the University of Nebraska, and, finally, the University of Wisconsin. While at Nebraska, in only his thirties, Ross associated with William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow, and was close friends with Theodore Roosevelt. Ross's most influential book, Sin and Society, published in 1907, solidified his progressive credentials for the next decade. Roosevelt wrote the introduction to the volume and gave Ross a national reputation as a leading academic progressive. When he moved on to Madison in 1905, he was noted for attacking big business in the United States and financier John D. Rockefeller. Although his international books increased his fame, it was his progressive works that solidified his standing in America. Foremost in Ross's belief system was the idea that there should be a worldwide spread of democracy without barriers. Democracy would then elevate the average man above inherited social status. History, in Ross's view, was a recounting of man's struggle to free himself from slavery and serfdom. Democracy stood at the zenith of this development and granted man inalienable rights. The ways to strengthen democracy were through education, low birthrates, industrial abundance, improved communications, and increased leisure time. Ross felt the dignity of the average citizen would be enhanced through education, smaller family size, and technological improvement. The means of Ross's equation were democracy strengthening people and people then strengthening democracy, with the end result of living in a better world based on progressive ideals.

Supporting Farmers

Ross supported industrial democracy in easing the struggle for food and shelter while producing greater wealth. He believed this system provided greater opportunities for the common man and creative individual. Ross's own ties were to rural America, but he enjoyed the dynamic role the city and industry played in fostering human progress and comfort. He held the traditional progressive notion of the West being the land of rugged individualism, similar to Teddy Roosevelt's own view and public persona. In this spirit, he approved of efforts to strengthen the farmer's role in society. He supported the Grange, Farmers' Alliance, Farmers' Union, and agricultural legislation, all as means of securing a greater share of the national wealth for the farmer.

Sympathy for the Factory Worker

The assembly line worker aroused Ross's sympathy. He expressed concern for the quality of the factory worker's life. The scholar worried about the erosion of spiritual values in the family and the rising rates of divorce, adultery, and desertion. Others would later express similar concerns about the worker's life and implement social welfare programs through the company. Henry Ford's famous five-dollar day had strong sociological overtones. Ross looked at the modern factory and saw economic insecurity, a lack of recreational opportunities, and threats to the worker's physical health. Ross could understand alcoholism in people "who scrape pig bristles sixty hours a week and live in mean, dingy little houses" and "seek the ruddy glow of the saloon's good fellowship and drink to forget." Equally depressing was the plight of the female worker.

Commercialization

Ross advocated humanitarian and practical measures to improve workers' lives. He favored legislation to install safety devices in factories, outlaw child labor, limit working hours, establish a minimum wage for women, and award unemployment compensation. Ross called the evils industrialism and capitalism brought to American life "commercialization," which resulted from the intensity of corporate ownership, social and economic stratification, and a growing impersonality between the producer and the consumer. Ross wanted formal controls and regulatory devices installed to thwart aggressive businessmen. Mobilizing religion, public opinion, law, elected officials, experts, and scholars, he believed, would help curb the unsavory practices of corporate America.

Honest Competition

Ross feared that unfair competition in business would increasingly concentrate wealth in the hands of the few and put an end to democratic institutions. Instead, he wanted to steer the middle ground and save capitalism from itself. He believed in Woodrow Wilson's New Freedom and the economic theories of Henry Carter Adams and John Bates Clark, both of which argued for regulating competition in order to preserve it. Honest competition would allow the virtuous, hardworking, and frugal citizen a way up the economic ladder.

Famous Progressive Activist

Edward Alsworth Ross became wealthy and famous by expounding the progressive view with a clarity and elegance few could claim. He perfectly embodied the ideas of the movement and touched upon most of the issues elected officials, unions, and corporate leaders had to deal with throughout the 1910s. A pioneer in economics and sociology and a crusading public reformer, Ross's influence reverberated through the decade.

Source:

Julius Weinberg, Edward Aisworth Ross and tèe Sociology of Progressivism (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1972).

Edward Alsworth Ross

Edward Alsworth Ross (1866-1951), one of the founders of American sociology, is best remembered for his "Social Control."

Edward A. Ross was born in Virden, Ill., on Dec. 12, 1866. His father was a farmer, and his mother a schoolteacher. At 20 Ross graduated from Coe College in Cedar Rapids, lowa; at 22, after two years as a teacher at the Ford Dodge Commercial Institute, he left for graduate study at the University of Berlin; and at 24 he received his doctorate in political economy at Johns Hopkins University.

In 1893 Ross was appointed full professor at Leland Stanford University, where he remained until his celebrated dismissal, in 1900, over the question of his right to speak out as a reformer on public issues. After five years at the University of Nebraska, he left in 1906 for the University of Wisconsin, famed for its Progressive-minded faculty and teachings. He spent the rest of his career at Wisconsin, first as professor of sociology and then as department chairman. He retired in 1937 and died in Madison.

Ross achieved national fame as a writer and popular lecturer. He authored 27 books and over 300 articles. His work can best be understood as the creative response of a reform-minded sociologist to the problems produced by the rapid industrialization and urbanization of the nation. Social Control (1901), a classic in American sociology, surveyed the institutions and values that would be needed to maintain individual freedom and social stability in an industrial order. Social Psychology (1908), the first textbook published in that field in the United States, similarly delineated the role of public opinion, custom, ceremony, and convention in maintaining social stability. The Principles of Sociology (1920, 1930, 1937), for many years one of the most popular texts in the field, stressed the role that the social processes can play in ensuring human progress.

More explicitly reformist in outlook were Ross's many books for the layman. Sin and Society (1907) established Ross as a major figure in Progressive thought; other popular works advocating social reform include Changing America (1909) and The Social Trend (1922). He also published many books on social conditions in Europe, Asia, and Africa. In 1917 he went to Russia to report on the Bolshevik Revolution and for many years advocated recognition of the Soviet Union by the U.S. government and an appreciation of the improvements the Soviets brought to the economic and social life of the Russian people.

For a time Ross was active as a nativist. In his early career he espoused the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon peoples and advocated immigration restriction to prevent a large-scale influx of southern and eastern Europeans to the United States. In the 1920s his nativism included a program of eugenics and the nationwide prohibition of liquor. By 1930 Ross shed these notions and spent the greater part of his efforts promoting the New Deal reform and the freedoms of the individual. He served as the national chairman of the American Civil Liberties Union (1940-1950).

As a popularizer of the notion that the purpose of sociology is the reform of society, Ross had no peer among American sociologists in his lifetime. An erudite scholar, inspiring lecturer, courageous reformer, and uncompromising champion of freedom for the individual, he fulfilled the role he established for himself admirably.

Further Reading

Ross's autobiography is Seventy Years of It (1936). For his biography see Julius Weinberg, Edward Alsworth Ross and the Sociology of Progressivism (1971). His sociological theories are best explained by William L. Kolb, "The Sociological Theories of Edward Alsworth Ross," in Harry Elmer Barnes, ed., An Introduction to the History of Sociology (1948). Other works which place Ross in the history of sociology are Charles Hunt Page, Class and American Sociology: From Ward to Ross (1940); Howard W. Odum, American Sociology: The Story of Sociology in the United States through 1950 (1951); and Heinz Maus, A Short History of Sociology (1956; trans. 1962).

Additional Sources

Ross, Edward Alsworth, Seventy years of it: an autobiography, New York: Arno Press, 1977, 1936. □

Edward Alsworth Ross 1866–1951, American sociologist, b. Virden, Ill., Ph.D. Johns Hopkins, 1891. He taught economics (1893–1900) at Stanford Univ., from which he was ousted in a controversy over academic freedom. He had opposed the use of migrant Chinese labor in the building of the railroads, a political position that disturbed the Stanfords, who were involved in the building of the Union Pacific RR. From 1906 to 1937 he was professor of sociology at the Univ. of Wisconsin. He analyzed collective behavior and social control and wrote voluminously on population and other problems. His chief works are Social Control (1901, new ed. 1969) and Principles of Sociology (1921).

Bibliography: See his autobiography, Seventy Years of It (1937); study by J. Weinberg (1972).