ABSTRACT
William Graham Sumner (1840-1910), Yale economist and sociologist, is generally regarded as having been the leading American disciple of Herbert Spencer,1
and the figure who more than anyone else is (perhaps erroneously) credited with, or blamed for, the flourishing of the Social Darwinist movement in the United States.2 Yet his writings encompass a wide range of topics and disciplines, making it difficult to assign him to any one category. An Episcopalian minister, his early published writings on political and social issues seem in the nature of sermons, confronting issues of individual freedom and responsibility, always with the aim of promoting social solidarity and social welfare. As a polemicist – what in an earlier time would have been termed a pamphleteer and later a political pundit – he addressed issues of election reform, bimetallism, labor reform, and even social relations. As an historian, he authored biographies of Robert Morris, Alexander Hamilton, and Andrew Jackson. As an economist, his advocacy of laissez-faire and private property rights commended him to the business classes even as he championed the plight of the “forgotten man,” while his commitment to free trade at a time when the orthodoxy demanded protective tariffs shows in him a need for consistency over pragmatic politics. As a sociologist, he was to produce one of the more important tracts of the early twentieth century, Folkways, and even became president of the American Sociological Society.
