ABSTRACT
In the crisis of the mid-1890s, when farmers, laborers, and reformers made a kind of last-ditch stand against industrialism, Edward W. Bemis and another Ely student, John Rogers Commons, faced the personal and professional crises that provided the next opportunities for clarifying the professional social scientist's role. On all the important counts—location, ideological position, and professional standing, Bemis turned out to be poorly situated. Bemis advocated municipal ownership of natural monopolies and a greatly expanded role for the state, but John Bates Clark rejected state socialism because he feared that government action would subvert the self-reliance of the individual. An economist shared the stigma of radicalism that made Bemis an academic pariah. Only minor variations in the pattern spared Commons the near total exclusion from academic influence that haunted Bemis. Like Ely and Bemis, Commons retained in the 1890s perspectives that other ethical economists had abandoned in the 1880s.
