Alford, Leon Pratt (03 January 1877–02 January 1942), engineer and publicist, was born in Simsbury, Connecticut, the son of Emerson Alford, a farmer and manufacturer, and Sarah Merriam Pratt. Alford studied at Plainville (Conn.) High School and then the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts, from which he received a bachelor’s degree in engineering in 1896 and, later, a master’s degree (1905). He took a position in 1896 as assistant shop foreman with the McKay Metallic Fastening Association and remained with the company through a series of mergers that eventually made it a part of the United Shoe Machinery Company. In 1900 he married Grace Agnes Hutchins. The couple had one child, a son. In 1902 he helped design United Shoe’s new plant in Beverly, Massachusetts, celebrated at the time as the world’s largest reinforced-concrete machine shop, and in 1906, after serving as production superintendent, he became head of the company’s mechanical engineering department....
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Alford, Leon Pratt (1877-1942), engineer and publicist
Ellis W. Hawley
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Baltzell, E. Digby (1915-1996), sociologist and educator
Richard Harmond
Baltzell, E. Digby (14 November 1915–17 August 1996), sociologist and educator, was born Edward Digby Baltzell on Rittenhouse Street in Philadelphia, the son of Edward Digby Baltzell and Caroline Adelaide Duhring Baltzell. Baltzell's Protestant patrician family, though it had become in his words “impecuniously genteel,” was nonetheless able to send him to Chestnut Hill Academy, a private day school, and later to St. Paul's, a select boarding school in New Hampshire. During Baltzell's senior year, his father, an alcoholic, lost his job because of drinking, and the subsequent strain on family finances kept him from going away to college. Instead, he attended the University of Pennsylvania, starting out in the School of Architecture, but financial difficulties forced him to drop out of school after his freshman year. Later, with a loan from a friend, Baltzell resumed his studies at Penn. But he forsook his dream of becoming an architect and enrolled in the Wharton School, where be majored in insurance. A series of odd jobs, including parking lot attendant and chauffeur, enabled him to meet his expenses. He graduated in 1939 and went to work with an insurance company as an underwriter and then at a pharmaceutical company, Smith, Kline, and French Laboratories, where he helped to conduct attitude surveys....
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Barker, Roger G. (31 March 1903–10 September 1990), child psychologist and pioneer
Harry Heft
Barker, Roger G. (31 March 1903–10 September 1990), child psychologist and pioneer in the naturalistic study of human development in community settings, was born in Macksburg, Iowa, the second of five children of Guy and Cora Barker, whose homesteader families arrived in the Midwest in the mid-nineteenth century. Guy Barker held a series of jobs: he was a farmer; served as the manager of a town’s general store; and then worked as a mid-level executive for a small insurance company in Des Moines, before returning to farming in eastern Alberta, Canada. Shortly after his Roger Barker’s birth, his family moved to the small town of Plover, Iowa, where he spent the first seven years of his life. Children growing up in small towns would later become his professional focus....
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Barnard, Chester Irving (1886-1961), telephone executive, foundation president, and management theorist
Daniel A. Wren
Barnard, Chester Irving (07 November 1886–07 June 1961), telephone executive, foundation president, and management theorist, was born in Malden, Massachusetts, the son of Charles H. Barnard, a machinist, and Mary E. Putnam. His mother died when Chester was five. Apprenticed as a piano tuner, he worked his way through preparatory school at Mount Hermon Academy in Northfield, Massachusetts, and won a scholarship to Harvard, where he supplemented his income by tuning pianos and running a small dance band. He studied economics and languages but failed to receive a degree because he lacked a laboratory science course, which he felt he could not complete and yet “do all the work I had to do to eat.” In 1909 he was employed by American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation (AT&T) in the statistical department, studying the rate-setting practices of European telephone companies. He married Grace Frances Noera in 1911. They had one child....
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Barnes, Harry Elmer (1889-1968), historian and sociologist
Justus D. Doenecke
Barnes, Harry Elmer (15 June 1889–25 August 1968), historian and sociologist, was born on a farm near Auburn, New York, the son of William Henry Barnes, Jr., a farmer, teacher, and later a prison guard, and Lulu C. Short. After graduating from high school in 1906, Barnes spent several years as a construction laborer and principal of a two-room village school in Montezuma, a small canal town in central New York. From 1909 to 1913 he attended Syracuse University, from which he graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in history. From 1913 to 1915 Barnes was instructor in sociology and economics at Syracuse, which awarded him an M.A. for work on the development of social philosophy from Plato to Comte. From 1915 to 1917 he was a graduate student at Columbia University, during which time he held a fellowship that allowed him to research at Harrow University from fall 1916 through early spring 1917, and in the subsequent academic year he taught at Columbia and Barnard. In 1918 he received a Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University; his dissertation focused on the history of the New Jersey prison system. In 1916 he married Grace Stone; they had one child. After divorcing Stone eleven years later, he married Jean Hutchison Newman in 1935....
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Becker, Howard Paul (1899-1960), sociologist
Paul J. Baker
Becker, Howard Paul (09 December 1899–08 June 1960), sociologist, was born in New York City, the son of Paul John Becker, a laborer, and Letitia Dickson. During Howard’s infancy Paul Becker left home for several years traveling throughout North America as a prospector. At this time Howard lived with his mother in a small village in Ontario, Canada. In 1910 Howard and his mother joined the venturesome father in Nevada. In 1917 they moved to South Bend, Indiana, where father and son worked at the Dort Motor Company. Howard worked in various automobile factories and gave evidence of a promising career as an industrial engineer that stemmed in part from technical training he picked up through a correspondence course....
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Bedaux, Charles Eugene (1886-1944), scientific manager, entrepreneur, and fascist collaborator
Steven Kreis
Bedaux, Charles Eugene (10 October 1886–18 February 1944), scientific manager, entrepreneur, and fascist collaborator, was born in Charenton-le-Pont, France, a suburb of Paris, the son of Charles Emile Bedaux, a railroad engineer, and Marie Eulalie, a dressmaker. Bedaux spent his first twenty years on the streets of Paris, doing odd jobs and usually avoiding school. He attended the Lycée Louis LeGrand in Paris but did not receive a regular degree. In 1906 he left Paris to seek his fortune across the Atlantic. In the United States Bedaux worked as a dishwasher, an insurance salesman, and a sandhog with the crews building the Hudson River tunnels. He also had a stint at the New Jersey Worsted Mills in Hoboken. He became a naturalized citizen in 1908....
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Bedaux, Charles Eugene (1886-1944)
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Bell, Daniel (10 May 1919–25 January 2011), sociologist and public intellectual
Howard Brick
Bell, Daniel (10 May 1919–25 January 2011), sociologist and public intellectual, was born Daniel Bolotsky in New York City, son of Benjamin Bolotsky and Anna Kaplan, immigrant Jewish garment workers living on the Lower East Side. His father died when Daniel was an infant; around ...
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Benjamin, Harry (1885-1986), physician, endocrinologist, and sex researcher
Keay Davidson
Benjamin, Harry (12 January 1885–24 August 1986), physician, endocrinologist, and sex researcher, was born in Berlin, Germany, the son of Julius Benjamin, a banker, and Bertha Hoffman. He became interested in human sexuality at the age of twenty, when he read August Forel’s ...
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Benjamin, Harry (1885-1986)
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Bentley, Arthur Fisher (1870-1957), sociologist, political scientist, and philosopher
James W. Endersby
Bentley, Arthur Fisher (16 October 1870–21 May 1957), sociologist, political scientist, and philosopher, was born in Freeport, Illinois, the son of Angeline Alice Fisher and Charles Frederick Bentley, a banker. The family moved to Omaha and then to Grand Island, Nebraska. Bentley briefly attended both York College, Nebraska, and the University of Denver, Colorado, before returning to Grand Island to work in his father’s bank. In 1890 Bentley entered Johns Hopkins University to study economics and sociology. He returned again to Grand Island and, with his father, collected economic and agricultural data on the community of Harrison, Nebraska. Bentley received an A.B. in 1892. His undergraduate thesis, “The Condition of the Western Farmer as Illustrated by the Economic History of a Nebraska Township,” was published the next year in the ...
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Bernard, Luther Lee (1881-1951), sociologist
Robert C. Bannister
Bernard, Luther Lee (29 October 1881–23 January 1951), sociologist, was born in Russell County, Kentucky, the son of Hiram H. Bernard and Julia Wilson, farmers. Although the senior Bernard showed courage fighting on the Union side in a border state, his petty tyranny contributed to the hardship and emotional turmoil of Luther’s youth, which was spent mostly in West Texas and southwestern Missouri. A single bright spot was provided by two charismatic young teachers who introduced him to Charles Darwin and modern science at the ungraded high school he attended in Gordon, Texas. Otherwise, as his younger sister later commented, his attitude toward his family was “bitter” and “antagonistic.”...
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Blumer, Herbert George (1900-1987), sociologist and teacher
Thomas J. Morrione
Blumer, Herbert George (07 March 1900–13 April 1987), sociologist and teacher, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Richard George Blumer, a cabinetmaker, and Margaret Marshall. He was married twice, first in 1922 to Marguerite Barnett, with whom he had one daughter. After their divorce, he married Marcia Jackson in 1943. They had two daughters. Blumer earned a B.A. (1921) and an M.A. (1922) from the University of Missouri, and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (1928). He supplemented his income during graduate school and in his first years of teaching by playing professional football with the Chicago Cardinals from 1925 to 1933, competing against football greats ...
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Bogardus, Emory Stephen (1882-1973), sociologist and university administrator
Robert C. Bannister
Bogardus, Emory Stephen (21 February 1882–21 August 1973), sociologist and university administrator, was born near Belvidere, Illinois, the son of Henry Brown Bogardus, a farmer of Dutch descent, and Eliza Stevenson. Growing up in a rural household, with no mail delivery or daily paper, Bogardus learned of the outside world through publications such as the ...
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Brooks, John Graham (1846-1938), reformer and sociologist
James E. Mooney
Brooks, John Graham (19 July 1846–08 February 1938), reformer and sociologist, was born in Acworth, New Hampshire, the son of Chapin Kidder Brooks, a merchant, and Pamelia Graham. During his youth he worked at the store owned by his father, who also represented the town of Acworth in the state legislature. After graduating from Kimball Union Academy in 1866, Brooks attended the University of Michigan Law School but soon changed his mind about studying law. He left after a year and taught the next year on Cape Cod. In 1868, after a summer in Quebec perfecting his French, he enrolled in Oberlin College, in Oberlin, Ohio. After graduating in 1872 Brooks returned to New England and enrolled in the Harvard Divinity School, where he graduated with a degree in sacred theology in 1875. He was soon ordained and served as a Unitarian minister in Roxbury, Massachusetts. In addition to his pastoral duties, he involved himself in labor reform and organized classes in history and economics for the workingmen of the neighborhood. His liberal sermons attracted listeners from Cambridge and Beacon Hill. He was soon addressing informal groups on social problems. In 1880 he married the widow of another Unitarian minister, Helen Lawrence Appleton Washburn, who shared his reform impulses; they had three children....
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Burgess, Ernest Watson (1886-1966), sociologist
Barbara E. Johnson
Burgess, Ernest Watson (16 May 1886–27 December 1966), sociologist, was born in Tilbury, Ontario, Canada, the son of Edmund James Burgess, an Anglican minister and teacher, and Mary Ann Jane Wilson. Having moved to the United States as a young child, Burgess grew up in a conventional middle-class family in small towns in Michigan and Oklahoma. Early in life he appeared destined for an academic career; his first grade teacher nicknamed him “the little professor.” He attended public schools through tenth grade, completed high school at a private academy near his home, and earned a bachelor’s degree from Kingfisher College in Oklahoma in 1908. One of the first sociologists to complete his advanced education in the United States, Burgess received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1913....
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Butterfield, Kenyon Leech (1868-1935), college president and rural sociologist
Donald B. Marti
Butterfield, Kenyon Leech (11 June 1868–26 November 1935), college president and rural sociologist, was born in Lapeer, Michigan, the son of Ira Howard Butterfield, Jr., and Olive F. Davison, farmers. He spent part of his boyhood on the family’s dairy farm and studied at the Michigan Agricultural College (now Michigan State University), which his grandfather Ira H. Butterfield had helped to found. There Butterfield took courses with the eminent horticulturist ...
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Cayton, Horace Roscoe (1903-1970), sociologist and writer
John P. Jackson
Cayton, Horace Roscoe (12 April 1903–22 January 1970), sociologist and writer, was born in Seattle, Washington, the son of Horace Roscoe Cayton, a newspaper reporter, and Susie Sumner Revels, an instructor at Rust College. Horace’s maternal grandfather, Hiram R. Revels, was elected senator from Mississippi at the height of Reconstruction; through the years, the family remained in the upper classes of African-American society. At the time of Horace’s birth, the Cayton family was prosperous, middle-class, and living in the heart of white Seattle....
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Chapin, Francis Stuart (1888-1974), sociologist
Lori Holyfield and Gary Alan Fine
Chapin, Francis Stuart (03 February 1888–07 July 1974), sociologist, was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Charles B. Chapin and Florence Johnson. Chapin was tempered by a Protestant work ethic passed down from his clergyman father and a love of poetry and painting from his mother. Chapin’s early interests included mathematics and chemistry. At twenty-one he received a B.S. in science at Columbia (1909). He continued at Columbia and earned his M.A. (1910) and then Ph.D. (1911) in sociology. ...
