ABSTRACT

John R. Common came to Syracuse in the fall of 1895, two years after John D. Archbold, vice president of Standard Oil and president of Syracuse University's Board of Trustees, had insisted that the university offer the job of chancellor to his New York City pastor, James Roscoe Day. As Syracuse's sociologist, John R. continued his practice of mixing research with teaching, and "collective activities". He taught classes in anthropology, criminology, ethnology, juvenile delinquency, penology, poverty, municipal government, and political corruption. John R'.s disorganized integration of research, teaching, and social action reached a sort of peak in the case of the George Junior Republic, founded by William Reuben George who had, at the age of fourteen gone with his parents to New York City from a farm in Tompkins County, Western New York State. Many years later after reading Giuseppe Mazzini's "The Duties of Man", he substituted duty and debt for liberty and love as a basis for social reform.