The Place of Albion Woodbury Small in Modern Sociology
Harry Elmer Barnes
Smith College
I. INTRODUCTORY
We shall attempt in the pages which follow to present an estimate of the work of Albion Woodbury Small, considered in its relation to the history of modern sociology as a whole. Another article in this issue of the American Journal of Sociology has been assigned the task of describing his personal life and academic career, and we shall bring that interesting story into the present chapter only in so far as it is directly related to the nature and influence of his sociological doctrines and objectives. It is also obvious that we cannot in the space available for this article present a summary of all of Dean Small's varied and voluminous writings in the field of sociology and social economics. We shall limit ourselves primarily to: ( I ) an analysis of the origins of his sociological interests and doctrines; (2) the leading stages in the progress of his sociological thinking and writing; (3) his chief books as related to his sociological thought; (4) his fundamental sociological conceptions; and (5) his academic and editorial activities as bearing upon the growth of sociology.
II. THE BACKGROUND OF SMALL'S SOCIOLOGICAL INTERESTS AND EQUIPMENT
While Small was, from the standpoints of chronology and of influence and activities, one of the "founders" of sociology, he was intermediate in the nature of his writings between the "systematizers" like Comte, Spencer, Ward, Giddings, and Stuckenberg, who dealt with all, or nearly all, of the various fields and problems of sociology, and the subsequent generation of specialists who have approached social analysis from the standpoints of methodology
( 16) anthrop-geography, biology, psychology, cultural analysis, institutional history, social economics, or human betterment. Small soared magisterially at times with the systematizers, at other times made extremely profound and cogent contributions to social economics, and always believed himself to be notably furthering the cause of sociological methodology. While in his later years Small looked upon himself as in large part a specialist, concentrating upon the problems of methodology, he lacked the training to function effectively as a true methodologist. What he meant, for the most part, when speaking of "method" was in reality an attitude toward, or the results to be gained from, social analysis. He was likewise too much absorbed in his general sociological interests to break away for any large amount of definitely specialized writing in the fields where lie was particularly proficient, namely, history, social economics, and social politics.
In his comprehensive summary of the history, problems, and fields of sociology in the article on "Sociology" in the Encyclopedia Americana, Small points out that until very recently the majority of the sociologists were not trained as sociologists from the beginning of their academic careers, but were recruited from the fields of history, economics, or political science. In his own case he was "recruited" from all three of these fields. The years 1879–81 Small spent in Germany at the Universities of Leipzig and Berlin, where he pursued his studies in the above-mentioned subjects. Particularly important were his courses under the great German economists and state socialists, Gustav Schmoller and Adolph Wagner. It was here that he delved deeply into the subject of the conflict of interests and classes in human society, and was thoroughly inoculated with the constructive German views as to the propriety and effectiveness of state supervision of the social process. These two basic doctrines were the core of Small's thinking in social science and his ablest contributions to sociological thought in America.
After teaching at Colby College for some years Small attended Johns Hopkins University during the year 1888–89, and here he continued his historical studies. The "Adams School" of historians based their work in part upon the dubious Teutonic and Aryan
(17) hypotheses, as applied to the evolution of political institutions, but they were, nevertheless, primarily interested in that comparative and genetic approach to historical problems which is of special value to the sociologist as a training in the approach to the problems of social genesis. While his experience at Johns Hopkins helped to impress upon Small the significance of the genetic approach to social institutions, he never forgave the historians for their narrowness, their provincialism, their perversion of method from a means into an end in itself, and the limited and superficial scope of their interests. In his discussion of Professor Giddings' paper at the New Orleans meeting in 1903 he said, in part, of the historians:[1]
The quarrel of the sociologists with the historians is that the latter have learned so much about how to do it that they have forgotten what to do. They have become so skilled in finding facts that they have no use for the truths that would make the facts worth finding. They have exhausted their magnificent technique in discovering things that are not worth knowing when they get through with them. These discoveries may be taken up by somebody else and brought into their meaning relations, but history, as it is mostly written today, does not come within sight of these relations. The historians are locating cinders on the face of the glacier, but they overlook the mountain ranges that carry the glacier.
When we once start to study human affairs, there is no stopping place, on any other ground than confession of mental incompetence, till we reach answers to these questions: What are the essentials in human relations? In what varieties do these essentials appear under different circumstances? How do we account for these universals and their accidents? What pointers does this knowledge give us about our own conduct?
Economics, political science and history, in the order named, were Small's chief stock in trade in his sociological work. To these he added a broad synthetic aim, with the end in view of diminishing the narrowness and suspicion prevalent among the various branches of social science and of pooling their mutual resources and products in one common service, namely, that of a clearer and more profound understanding of the social process as a whole. Small was, however, in no sense a master of anthropogeography, biology, psychology, or anthropology, which placed definite limita-
( 18) -tions upon his efforts in any comprehensive approach to the analysis of the social process. He was also relatively innocent of statistical methods, which was a grave handicap to his ambitious efforts in the field of general sociological methodology.
III. THE GENESIS OF SMALL'S SOCIOLOGICAL THINKING
In his General Sociology Small states that the history of sociology may be described as "a gradual shifting of effort from analogical representation of social structures to real analysis of social processes." This characterization also admirably describes the progress of Small's own sociological achievements. Owing to his reading of Schaeffle and the other "organicists," his earliest sociological writings exhibit the influence of this group of writers whose chief interest lay in the elaboration of the analogies between the individual organism and the social organism. This is particularly evident in Books III and IV of his Introduction to the Study of Society. Yet he was never guilty of any of the absurdities of many of these writers in going to grotesque extremes in elaborating such analogies. He used the analogical method in a very sensible and discriminating manner as an effective mode of illuminating his descript ion of social processes and institutions.
His studies with the German economists, especially Schmoller's exposition of the conflict of classes, impressed upon Small the importance of material interests in the social process. His work on the history of economics in the nineteenth century convinced him, however, of the narrowness of the economists' view of interests, a conviction which was buttressed by his own theological and religious training and by the fundamentally ethical orientation of his thought from his student days to his death. This led Small to the decision that the cataloguing and classification of a broader and more inclusive schedule of human interests, and the description of their emergence, conflict, and adjustment in human society, constituted the key to any truly dynamic sociology. He worked along this line himself during the last decade of the nineteenth century, and about 1900 he came upon the leading works of Ratzenhofer, who had simultaneously developed the same mode of approach to social analysis. Small's General Sociology is largely a
( 19) synthesis of his own views, independently arrived at, with the contributions of Ratzenhofer. It was his study of the struggle and accommodation of interests that brought Small to his larger conception of society as a "becoming" or "emerging" process, which constituted the dynamics of his system.
The conception of the group as the core of organized interests and the unit of the social process led Small to what he called his methodological studies, namely, his discussions of sociology as primarily a study of man and society in relation to the group-basis of life. He never tired of emphasizing this point of view, and almost his last intellectual effort was a circular letter of September11, 1924, on this subject, brought forth by Professor Malcolm M.Willey's review of his Origins of Sociology.
Though the ethical element was never absent from his writings and teachings, his interest in social betterment increased as years went on. Indeed, Small from the first held that sociology owed both its origins and its justification to its potential services as a guide to a valid program of social reform. To him ethics was not primarily a matter of sexual purity but an improvement of social institutions and intellectual life. Either the wrecking of a major railroad system, through the predatory manipulation of high finance, or the obstructive stupidities of bigoted fundamentalism seemed to him a worse sin than adultery. He was particularly interested in the mitigation of capitalism and in the substitution of service for profit as the basic motive of economic organization and activity. His general notions in this field were expressed in his Between Eras, and much more systematically in his famous university course on the conflict of classes.
There is, thus, to be seen in the development of Small's sociological interests a logical sequence of doctrinal evolution. An intelligent appreciation of the organic analogy emphasized the primary significance of function as compared with structure; the analysis of function led to the conception of the importance of the realization and accommodation of interests in society; this created the view of society as a process of social conflict ultimately transformed under state control into socialization and co-operative endeavor; the social process was, however, seen to be a group affair,
(20) and this made it evident that sociology is primarily the analysis of the group aspects of life; finally, the understanding of the social process is a purely academic matter unless the information so gathered can be exploited in the service of social betterment, which fact makes it clear that the ultimate purpose of sociology is to initiate and advance a broader and more profound approach to social ethics.
IV. SMALL'S CHIEF WRITINGS AND THEIR PLACE IN SOCIOLOGICAL LITERATURE
With the exception of his Between Eras Small's books all grew out of his classroom lectures and seminar discussions. This accounts in part for the colloquial nature of some of them, and the lack of literary and textual finish which characterizes most of them. Tables of contents and extensive excerpts from books analyzed were freely embodied in the texts of his books. Even many of his articles published in the American Journal of Sociology and not subsequently embodied in his books were read in his classes or seminars.
His first publications in the field of sociology were three syllabi for a course in social science in Colby College, the first of these being the earliest printed foundation of a course in sociology in this country. Next came his Introduction to the Study of Society, in the preparation of which he had the collaboration of his student and colleague, George M. Vincent. This was published in 1894, two years after he went to the University of Chicago to become head of the new department of sociology there. It was a pioneer work which endeavored to chart out the field of sociology and to present its main problems within the scope of a college manual. It dealt with the province and development of sociology, described the evolution of society from isolated agrarian entities to the modern metropolitan groups, analyzed social structures and functions on the basis of the organic analogy, and risked a highly rudimentary excursion into social psychology. If the work seems an archaic curiosity at the present time, this is only an indication of the progress in social science since 1894, as the book was then an intellectual adventure.
(21)
By all odds, the most substantial and enduring of Small's works was his General Sociology, published in 1905 and reprinted many times thereafter. The first part of the book was a sketch of representative stages and contributions in the history of sociology. Then came a presentation of Ratzenhofer's conception of sociology as primarily a classification of human interests and an analysis of their significance in the social process. Next followed a detailed consideration of the social process, in which Ratzenhofer's conceptions were extensively supplemented by those of Small. The work concluded with a sociological reconstruction of ethical problems and methods. This section constituted a profound and courageous effort to relate the ethical concepts and problems of society to the social process and to provide a positive basis for ethical judgments and social betterment. In many respects the book contained basic contributions to economics and politics, quite as important as those to sociology itself.
Following the General Sociology came the Adam Smith and Modern Sociology, published in 1907. Here Small considered Smith as the harbinger of modern sociology on the basis of Smith's economico-ethical doctrines and attitudes, whereas Giddings had, a decade before, traced at least his own version of sociology to the psychological premises of Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. As Small interpreted Smith, the latter was very really a prototype of the former from the standpoint of attitudes and interests in regard to the analysis of the social process. According to Small, The Wealth of Nations was in reality a treatise on sociology with a special interest in the economic processes of society. As Small says :[2]
If one were to come upon The Wealth of Nations for the first time, with a knowledge of the general sociological way of looking at society, but with no knowledge of economic literature, there would be not the slightest difficulty nor hesitation about classifying the book as an inquiry in a special field of sociology . . . . Smith set a new standard of inquiry into the economic section of the conditions of life, while life presented itself to him as, on the whole, a moral affair, in which the economic process is logically a detail . . .. Modern sociology is virtually an attempt to take up the larger program of social
( 22)
analysis and interpretation which was implicit in Adam Smith's moral philosophy, but which was suppressed for a century by prevailing interest in the technique of the production of wealth.
It would be difficult to state more precisely in the same number of words Small's own view of the socio-economic problem or the nature of his major contributions to the science of society. The book is, incidentally, an effective indictment of the tendency of the economists of the last century to concentrate upon the wealth interest in society, to exaggerate its significance, and to consider it in relative isolation from the other social factors. Small expresses his view on this matter in the following paragraph:[3]
Applying these generalities to the case in hand, the question which the sociologist is always implicitly asking of the economist is: To what extent are you making your analyses and passing your valuations of economic activities as though they were bounded by the wealth interest alone, and to what extent do your analyses and valuations take account of the whole process of moral evolution within which the wealth interest is an incident? Economic theory, in England and America, throughout the nineteenth century, made the wealth interest unduly prominent in the process of moral evolution, and thereby introduced confusion into the whole scale of moral valuation. The present essay makes a beginning of showing this in detail. The principal methodological thesis which the exhibit is to support is that a sufficient interpretation of life to be a reliable basis for social programs must express economic relations at last in terms of the whole moral process. This is true of political economy in so far as it purports to be more than a technology of things. To the degree in which political economy proposes to establish norms for evaluating the activities of persons, it must answer to the whole moral process in which all the activities of persons derive their meaning.
Small's most erudite volume, The Cameralists, was the fourth in the list of his publications. This was a thorough study of that type of German social, economic, and political doctrine which was in a rough way the analogue of British mercantilism. Small was interested in it both as a forerunner of the synthetic social science for which he was laboring, and also as an example of the exploitation of social science as the guiding and controlling factor in public policy and social betterment. He thus explains the basis of the in-
( 23) -terest which led him through this painstaking but thankless compilation:[4]
This system of ideas and of practice had been developing since 1555. It did not correspond in its subdivisions with later academic definitions of the social sciences. It started not as a general theory but as a formulation of administrative expediency. It set forth with the frank purpose of subordinating everything within the control of the state to the state's problem of existence. The central question to which cameralism elaborated answers was: The ruler being all-powerful over his territories and his subjects, what policies, and what details of practice in pursuance of the policies must he adopt, in order to make his rule most secure at home, and in order to provide most abundant means of asserting himself against other rulers? It would require but little reflection to prepare against surprise at what happened. Under the circumstances of the time, this question necessarily led to answers which amounted to prescribed programs covering the entire outward life of the subjects of German rulers. It soon became evident to the advisers of those rulers, and to the administrators of their states, that their problem involved not merely physical factors, but that it was a question of training the whole population for all the different sorts of useful work of which human beings are capable. From generation to generation the men who developed cameralistic theory and practice saw more and more clearly that if the rulers of German states were to command abundant resources, they must rule over resourceful people. This meant that the people must be trained physically, mentally, morally, and technically. In the end, therefore, cameralistic theory covered everything in the lives of the citizens, from farm work to religious worship. The machinery for administering this theory grew more and more complex. In detail its organization differed in one state from that in another. Its main purpose was everywhere the same, viz., to make the people as amenable as possible to all the discipline necessary to insure maximum performance of all the physical, mental, and moral processes tributary to the strength of the ruler.
It need not be pointed out that this program involved dealing from this special point of view, with every sort of activity which has since come under the attention of political science and political economy in their latest forms. In so far as cameralism dealt with economic questions in the later sense, it treated them as matters primarily of the state, not of individuals. German economic theory, therefore, was collectivistic in the highest degree. Only incidentally, and in a wholly subordinate degree, was it individualistic. It was a theory of, for and by the government.
Small's fifth book, The Meaning of Social Science, was a telling attack upon the unfortunate tendency toward the departmen-
( 24) -talizing of the social sciences in the nineteenth century, with the resulting suspicion, jealousy, narrowness, and incomplete analyses of social situations. Small's healthy contempt for the departmental bigotry of the social scientists constitutes a leading thread running through all of his writings. It appears as early as his first syllabus prepared in the "eighties" at Colby College, and in one of his very latest published reviews he came back to the matter with all of his old time vigor:[5]
Without essential perversion, the story of the social sciences in the United States during the past generation might be told under the figure of a pack of mongrels foraging for their keep and each snarling at each whenever one found a consumable bite. All the needed reduction of exaggeration in the analogy might be effected by the substitute that until recently the typical American social scientist has acted as though he feared that the supply of truth in the world is not enough to go around, and that his share of it might run short if anybody else went in search of it along any but his own beaten paths. The social scientists have manifested a maximum of shortdiametered clannishness each toward his own kind, and a minimum of magnanimity toward everybody else. The result has been stunted and shriveled social scientists and social science.
The major theses defended in The Meaning of Social Science are that knowledge of society must be a unity, however much there need be in the way of specialization in different types of investigation; that there can be no adequate social science which does not take into account all phases of human experience and their interaction upon each other; and that the chief purpose of social science is to arrive at a valid appraisal of human values with the aim of promoting the creation of a more adequate and just social order. Some of his more decisive statements upon these points follow:[6]
Whatever else may be true or false about sociology, its reason for existence is something which does not shut it off nor set it apart from other social sciences. On the contrary, its essence is an assertion which must be the center of all sane social science, namely, that knowledge of human experience cannot at last be many; in the degree in which it approaches reality it must be one knowledge
Sociologists declare that the experience bounded by the reactions between men and physical nature on the one hand, and the reactions of men with one
( 25)
another on the other, is an interconnected experience, and that we shall have a science of it only in the proportion of our insight into the way and degree in which each item of this experience is affected by every other item of it . . ..
Much the most striking and original of Small's works was his Between Eras: From Capitalism to Democracy, published in 1913. This is one of the most outspoken and courageous books yet published in America, but the peculiar nature of the presentation of the material in the form of dialogues has prevented any extensive circulation of the work, and it created little stir.
Between Eras is as relentless a criticism of our conventional unmitigated capitalism as can be found in Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class, The Theory of Business Enterprise, and Absentee Ownership, Tawney's Acquisitive Society, or the Webbs' Decay of Capitalist Civilization. In arriving at his critical attitude toward capitalism, and his unusually frank and capable analysis of capitalistic institutions, Small was greatly influenced by Schaeffle, Schmoller, and Veblen, but beyond all others by Werner Sombart, whose Moderne Kapitalismus came into his hands about 1905. Small adopted a near-socialistic thesis that nature and labor are the sole ultimate factors in productivity. He proved the ethical bankruptcy of the profit economy, and thoroughly exposed the wastes, inefficiency, and injustices of capitalistic exploitation. He attacked the whole conception of the inheritance of immense fortunes carrying with them extensive financial or industrial control. He made clear the fictitious nature of the divine-right theory of unlimited private property which is the veritable corner-stone of our American Politik and economic system. In the place of the profit economy he would substitute the conception of production for human service under state supervision. Inheritance should be severely limited, and labor given its just share in the control of industrial enterprise and social policy. As a startling and suggestive work, Between Eras can, without exaggeration, be compared with Plato's Republic, and its dialogues are much more cogent and relevant for contemporary readers than those contained in the work of the great Greek. The same line of analysis, in a somewhat more conservative vein, was carried on by Small in an article on "The Sociology of Profits," published in the American Journal of
( 26) Sociology for January, 1925. The fundamental principles and position, expounded in Between Eras were set forth in much more thorough and formal fashion in Small's famous course on the "Conflict of Classes," and it is a great misfortune that the material in this course was never published systematically in book form.
While it was printed in the American Journal of Sociology for May, 1916, Small's "Fifty Years of Sociology in the United States (1865—1915)" was in reality a book. It is an invaluable source for the history of American social science, particularly in its academic aspects, and it contains much autobiographical material. It was based upon unique personal reminiscences and careful research. The monograph also contained much upon the development of sociological methods and objectives. It is admirably supplemented by his article on "The Future of Sociology" published in the Publications of the American Sociological Society for 1920. He also left unpublished a work on the history of sociological method in the United States which we may hope will ultimately see light.
Small's last work was his Origins of Sociology, published in 1924. It is a comprehensive history of outstanding tendencies in German social science during the nineteenth century. Particular attention is given to those influences originating in Germany which helped to shape American social science between 1800 and 1900. As an authority on the subjects covered in this book Small was without a rival in the United States. In this work he selected the following topics to illustrate the development of social sciences in Germany during the nineteenth century: the Savigny-Thibaut controversy as illustrative of the development of the concept of continuity in the historical and social process; Eichhorn's illustration of the complexity of social and historical situations; Niebuhr's contributions to the scientific scrutiny and evaluation of historical sources; Leopold von Ranke's insistence upon adequate documentation in historical narrative and generalizations; the organization of source and archival material through the labors of Pertz, Waltz, and the editors of the Monumenta; the development of systematic historical methodology by Bernheim; Cameralism and the rise of objectivism in the social sciences; the rise of systematic economics with Adam Smith and the Classical school; the
(27) development of economics along the lines of comparative economic history by Wilhelm Roscher; Karl Menger and the development of the psychological point of view in economics; Karl Knies and the entry of the ethical factor into economic discussion; the Schmoller-Menger controversy over the relative value of the utility-valuation analysis and the historical method in economic science; Schaeffle, Schmoller, Wagner, and the professorial socialists, who insisted upon the social and ameliorative point of view in economic and political activity; the Treitschke-Schmoller controversy which illustrated the clash of the individualistic and social points of view in Politik; the contributions of Albert Schaeffle in the way of introducing the sociological approach to economics; the work of the Ahrens—Von Mohl group in developing the sociological orientation in German political science; and, finally, the rise of the sociological movement in the United States.
In addition to these books Small contributed innumerable articles to the American Journal of Sociology, though most of them were later reprinted in book form. Whatever the verdict which historians of sociology may pass upon the value of his discussions of methodology and his positive sociological theory, there can be no doubt that Small's written work falls primarily under the heading of the history of social theory, especially Germanic social theory and its influence upon American social science. No other man has done as much to make the fundamental contributions of modern German social science available to American readers.
While Small was a man. of wide erudition and possessed of a very fertile and alert mind, he lacked almost every quality which goes to make an attractive writer. In part this was due, as we pointed out above, to the fact that his books were mainly the publication of classroom notes and lectures, sometimes admittedly without any alteration or revision. He was extremely verbose and discursive, and his style frequently colloquial almost to the point of being garrulous. There were also endless repetitions of the same thought and phraseology. His major points and contentions were almost always sound and suggestive, but their phrasing was often tortuous and confused, a condition which was intensified by the involved nature of his written expression. It is true that Small has
( 28) exercised an influence upon American Sociology greater and more salutary than any other individual except, perhaps, Giddings, but he has done it chiefly through his intellectual courage and integrity, his great energy as a teacher, his real erudition, his capacity to charm and inspire students by his gracious and kindly manner, and his influence as the editor of the world's foremost sociological journal. We may well wonder what his national and international influence might have been if the cogency and penetration of his thinking had equaled that of Giddings or his writing had possessed the verve and lucidity of Ross. In a letter to the present writer, commenting on his review of the Origins of Sociology, Small, with characteristic candor and humility, admitted these stylistic defects:[7]
As to form, you are of course utterly right. My mother once asked me, with a deep sigh, "Why is it that you never publish anything that contains either gospel or entertainment" I could only admit the soft impeachment, and leave the subject with an unsatisfying answer. I do not remember that I have ever written anything, except things to be spoken, without feeling myself trailed by some coming man who would carry the job nearer to completion. All my life I have felt myself under mandate to get out stuff in the rough, which would he a challenge to somebody to work it over, or to get out more and better stuff of a more ultimate order. I have never been able to address myself to book readers, but only to potential book makers, and I have already felt. that, with them, as makers not of literature but of technical treatises, not form, but substance, and pointers toward more substance, matters.
In fairness to Small, however, it should be pointed out that his stylistic defects are to be found chiefly in his theoretical works. His critical reviews, and especially his treatment of concrete historical materials, as exemplified by his Beginnings of American Nationality, often exhibited clarity and directness.
V. DOMINANT POINTS IN SMALL'S SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
We may now devote our attention to a brief summary of the central and dominant contributions of Small to sociology. In the first place, he was thoroughly converted to Lester F. Ward's view that the only adequate guidance in adjusting man to the complex conditions of modern life and in effecting orderly social change
( 29) must be sought in the social sciences. Small was, however, fully aware of the undeveloped nature of the social sciences at the present time. In his letter of September II, 1924, he frankly admitted this in the following words:[8]
As to the so-called social sciences, on the average and as a rule, they have not passed far out of the homely wisdom stage of development. If we apply the acid test to the total output of what we now call the social sciences, from Herodotus down, and including the 1924 vintage, each social science has consisted of 95 parts omnium gatherum of all sorts of pertinent and impertinent selections from the scrap heaps of human experience, promoted in a few later generations by use of bibliographies and card-indexes, combined with five parts of critically authenticated first-hand discovery strictly pertinent to some accurately defined problem. On the whole, every social scientist, whether he preferred to call himself historian, economist, sociologist, or what not, has actually, in ninety-five hundredths of his activities been a rationalizer at large, and only in five per cent of his activities has he concentrated upon close investigation of strictly defined problems, by use of an adequate method. I am prepared for correction as to my arithmetical terms. It is conceivable that the ratio may turn out to be 94% general discursiveness and 6% serious science, but that will not fatally affect the principle.
Yet, the social sciences are being rapidly improved in their objectivity and quantitative methodology, and we shall probably be correct in expecting that they will have reached a status which will make them adequate for social guidance fully as soon as society will be ready to accept advice from this quarter. Small devoted his professional life to the advancement of both of these programs: the improvement of the social sciences and the increase of their public prestige.
Small's conception of the nature of sociology underwent important modifications with the progress of his sociological thinking. In his Introduction to the Study of Society he adopted the view that sociology is primarily a general synthetic science embodying an organization of all the knowledge concerning man which has been accumulated or is being gathered by the special social sciences. Subsequently, due in part to his preoccupation with Ratzenhofer's mode of approaching sociology from the standpoint of the analysis of the adjustment of the struggles of "interest-groups," and in part to his approval of Simmel's notion of sociology as a
( 30) type of methodology concerned with a study of the nature and lot forms of social groups, Small developed his later contention that sociology is "a collection of techiques for exposing group relations in human affairs"; or again, "sociology is that variety of study of the common subject matter of social science which trains attention primarily upon the forms and processes of groups."Perhaps the best of his later definitions of sociology is that contained in his Americana article:[9]
The sociological technique is that variant among the social science techniques which proceeds from the perception that, after allowing for their purely physical relations, all human phenomena are functions not only of persons, but of persons whose personality on the one hand expresses itself in part through the formation of groups, and on the other hand is in part produced through the influence of groups. In brief, sociology is that technique which approaches knowledge of human experience as a whole through investigation of group-aspects of the phenomena.
Small, himself, recognized the transformation of his views on this subject and repudiated to some extent his earlier omnibus conception of sociology. In his article on the "Future of Sociology" he admitted that:[10]
In proportion as sociology becomes responsibly objective it will leave behind its early ambition for a hegemony over social sciences, and it will realize its destiny of functioning within a federation of scientific activities. With widening and clarifying of social consciousness, it must become progressively evident that a single technique, no matter how penetrating, can at most lay bare only certain constituent aspects of the total social process.
His view of sociology thus passed from a notion of the subject as a synthesis of the special social sciences to a view much more like that of Giddings, namely, that of sociology as the elemental or basic social science. Yet Small never departed from his original healthy notion that the study of society must be a unified and co-operative process, in which sociology and the special social sciences must carry on an intelligent and co-ordinated division of labor. Sociology, while it may not legitimately aspire to be an over-science or a complete synthesis of all existing knowledge concerning society, must always function in the closest rapport with the spe-
( 31) -cial social sciences and must appropriate the latest contributions from each of the latter which will aid in arriving at a more comprehensive and profound understanding of the group life of man as the core of the social process. To quote once more from Small's letter of September 11, 1924:[11]
I have never been able to admire the ideal of a scientist as a man who should confine his personality within the bounds of his specialty. On the contrary, my conception of the ideal scientist is a consummate technician in his own specialty, or specialties, but over and above that a reliable liaison officer between his specialty and all other divisions of knowledge, including the arts of converting scientific knowledge into human advantage.
The same spirit emerges from the following paragraph taken from his article on the "Future of Sociology":[12]
We may well congratulate ourselves upon the complete absence from our horizon of signs that the near future of sociology is to be sectarian. Differences of opinion there are among us in plenty. We differ about emphasis, about method, about vocabulary, about choices of immediate programs. All this makes for health. On the other hand, there is nothing among us remotely parallel with the quarrels in the eighteen-eighties between the economists of the "classical," the "historical,"and the "Austrian" communions, not to speak of the minor sects. We are not a jangle of party proclamation—"I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas."Various as our expressions are in outward appearance, we are bound together by common consciousness of a vocation to see that group aspects of human experience receive their dues in all attempts to interpret or to control human affairs.
In his Americana article Small recognizes the present trend in sociology away from the older practice of attempting a systematic presentation of all or most of the fields of sociology in one general treatise and toward specialization in what may be called "schools" or "provinces" of the subject as a whole. He distinguishes some six fields into which contemporary sociology has been differentiated: (1)methodology; (2) group psychology; (3) social analysis; (4) social survey; (5) social diagnosis; and (6) drafting of concrete programs for social betterment.
While Small himself wrote and discoursed incessantly in the last fifteen or twenty years of his life concerning "method" and
( 32) "methodology" in the social sciences, it must be doubted if he used this term in a strictly accurate sense or recognized exactly what methodology means;. In spite of his complete divorcement from obscurantism Small's early training and methods of thought were an almost insuperable handicap to his ambitions to function as a specialist in sociological methodology. His early training was in philosophy and theology, and despite his subsequent intellectual emancipation he tended to think and write in a philosophical and metaphysical strain and to deal with imponderable abstractions. His original set of mental patterns were of the prescientific and premethodological stage of social science.
Strictly speaking, sociological method is a technique of social investigation and analysis, primarily, if not exclusively, the quantitative method opened up by the rise of modern statistical science. This is certainly the only general method which applies to all the fields of sociology, though the degree of the possible application of the quantitative method varies widely in the diverse fields of sociological analysis. Aside from this, one can use the term "method" in a loose way as identical with the orientation and technique of the workers in the special fields of sociology. Small possessed almost no knowledge of modern statistics, which at once prevented him from dealing thoroughly with basic sociological methodology in general. Likewise, of the special fields of sociology, he had a competent body of technical knowledge only with regard to economic and political analysis, and here he did work of great distinction.
The fact is that what Small pleased to call sociological method was in reality a sort of combination of the general sociological idea with what he viewed as the province and objectives of sociology. Methodology, then, was to Small chiefly definitions of sociology and its subdivisions; invention and elucidation of sociological categories; discussions of the province of sociology; and suggestions as to the ultimate ethical objectives of sociology. This is well illustrated by his summary definition of sociological method in his Meaning of Social Science:[13] "This method is throughout objective investigation and evaluation of human experience, with the purpose of constructing valuations into more complete realiza-
( 33) -tions." Some may object that the present writer is too narrow or technical in his definition of sociological methodology, but even if we concede that Small was correct in his conception of this field we must admit that, except in the politico-economic province, he wrote and talked primarily about sociological method instead of indicating just what it is.
The pivotal element in Small's own sociological system was the notion of human interests and their social control. The analysis of the origins, expression, adjustment, and more intelligent direction and control of human interests constituted the essence of both the analytical and the ethical aspects of his systematic writings. The concept of interests and interest-groups as the clue to the dynamics of the social process has a long history, going back as far as Aristotle. It was basic in the thought of the "Fathers" from Madison to Calhoun. In modern sociology it took its origins from the works of the economists, and from the fundamental work of Ludwig Gumplowicz in his elucidation of the rationale of the Rassenkampf . His disciple, Gustav Ratzenhofer, still further elaborated this formula, and Small constructed his system on the basis of his own views and those of Ratzenhofer. The cardinal importance of this phase of his work Small pointed out as early as 1903 in his discussion of Professor Giddings' paper at the New Orleans meeting of the American Sociological Society, two years before the publication of the General Sociology:[14]
We need to know, in the concrete, just how human interests have combined with each other in every variety of circumstance within human experience. There has never, to my knowledge, been a fairly successful attempt to schedule efficient human interests in general, till Ratzenhofer did it less than ten years ago in Das Wesen and Zweck der Politik. With this work sociology attained its majority. Henceforth, all study of human relations must be rated as provincial, which calculates problems of life with reference to a less comprehensive scheme of interests than his analysis exhibits.
As early as 1893[15] Small had formulated a schedule of human interests in six groups:[16] I, the primary or "Health interest" sub-
( 34) -divided into three constituent elements: (1) the "Food interest"; (2)the "Sex interest"; and (3) the "Work interest"; II, the "Wealth interest"; III, the "Sociability interest"; IV, the "Knowledge interest"; V, the "Beauty interest"; and VI, the "Rightness interest."
The emergence of these interests in society, their conflicts and adjustments in the form of group activity, carried on under the controlling and mitigating mediation of the state, and the progressive development of ever greater appreciation of the importance and significance of the higher types of interests constitute the social process, which is the vital subject matter of all dynamic sociology. Small summarizes his views on these critical matters in the following selections which we have taken from the General Sociology.[17]
In a word, then, the energies that have their basis of action in the human animal differentiate into impulses that cause the actions of that animal to radiate. The individual that comes into being through this differentiation is the resultant of the different interests that wrestle with each other in his personality. The career of that individual, and of all individuals combined, is persistent struggle, on the one hand, of the interests in the individual, by virtue of which he is what he is at any moment, and, on the other hand, of the combination of interests in one individual with the combination of interests in all the others
So far as I am able to account for the activities of men, they all run back to motives that have their roots in combinations of this health-interest with interests that arrange themselves in five other groups. Men have a distinct interest in controlling the resources of nature, in asserting their individuality among their fellows, in mastering all that can be known, in contemplating what seems to them beautiful, and in realizing what seems to them right. I have not been able to find any human act which requires, for explanation, any motive that cannot be accounted for by specialization and combination of these interests. Each of the groups has subdivisions, more or fewer than those of the first. All men, however, from the most savage to the most highly civilized, act as they do act, first, because of variations in the circumstances of their environment, both physical and social; second, because of variations and permutations of their six elementary interests . . ..
Without affirming that either conflict or conjunction of interests is the essence of the social process, we may say that, in form, the social process is incessant reaction of persons prompted by interests that in part conflict with
( 35)
the interests of their fellows, and in part comport with the interests of others. The ratio of the conflict and of the harmony is also infinitely variable. The kinds of conflict and harmony are likewise variable. In general, conflict is the obvious phase of association in earlier stages of the social process, while conjunction of interests grows more evident in later stages
We must at the outset disarm the prejudice that States are merely political organizations. That notion is parallel with the economic provincialism just noticed. The modern State is both a political organization and an economic system, but it is much more. The State is a microcosm of the whole human process. The State is the co-operation of the citizens for the furtherance of all the interests of which they are conscious
Whatever else the State may or may not do, this at least is its constant rôle, viz.: The State always brings to bear upon the individuals composing it a certain power of constraint to secure from them, in all their struggles with each other, the observance of minimum established limits of struggle. This is not a hypothetical statement of what the State might, could, would, or should do. It is a literal generalization of what every State actually does. It is an objective statement of a cardinal fact in the social process
Civic society organized as the State is composed of individual and group factors, each of which has in itself certain elements of political independence. That is, each has interests seemingly distinct from the interests of the others. Each has some degree of impulse to assert these interests in spite of the others. Thus the State is a union of disunions, a conciliation of conflicts, a harmony of discords. The State is an arrangement of combinations by which mutually repellent forces are brought into some measure of concurrent action
At present we may use the terms "socialization" and "civilization" interchangeably. Each is a phase of the other. We have just seen how struggle—i.e., the specialization of interests—unwittingly pays tribute, and becomes vassal to, socialization. It turns the interests which are antagonists of each other into a common social stock, administered by a group composed of all the previously conflicting groups
Civilization, so far as it is bounded by national limits, consists in enlargement of the content of the common spiritual substance, until it approaches inclusion of all interests, so far as they depend upon concerted conduct; leaving scope for independence only in those activities in which free individual movement best realizes the common interests
Our whole life—from our eating and sleeping, to our thinking, and trading, and teaching, and playing, and praying, and dying—is a part of the social process. In us the process has its lodgment. In the process we live and move and have our being. Instead of not being concerned with it, nothing else is our concern, so far as we are citizens of the world. We do not know our personal concerns until we see through and through the social process
Human experience composes an associational process. The elements of that process are interests lodged in individuals. These interests may be re-
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-duced to least common denominators (ordaining relatively simple essentials, but in the condition); of actual life, even at the most primitive stages, the interests express themselves in wants capable of infinite variation and combination. The individuals thus stimulated seek satisfactions of their wants, and efforts to this end bring them into contact with each other. At first these contacts are more evidently collisions; interest clashes with interest. The immediate result is formation of groups for offensive and defensive purposes. These groups in time vary more and more from the primitive animal type. As the variation increases, association becomes an accelerated process of differentiation or permutation of interests within the individuals, of contacts between individuals, of conflict and of co-operation among individuals and the groups into which they combine. Incidental to this pursuit of purposes, and to the process of adjustment between persons which results, individuals enter into certain more or less persistent structural relationships with each other, known in general as "institutions," and into certain more or less permanent directions of effort which we may call the social functions. These social structures and functions are, in the first instance, results of the previous associational process; but they no sooner pass out of the fluid state, into a relatively stable condition, than they become in turn causes of subsequent stages of the associational process, or at least conditions affecting details of the process. There comes a time when some of the individuals in association begin to reflect upon the association itself in a fragmentary way. They think of their family, their clan, their tribe, their nation, as having interests of its own, instead of confining themselves to impulsive action stimulated merely by their individual interests. These men coin and utter thoughts and feelings and purposes which become current in 'their group. There are thenceforward more or less distinct group-programs, co-ordinating the instinctive endeavors of the individuals, and producing a certain mass movement, in addition to the molecular motions, in the associational process. That is, the groups, as such, entertain purposes, and combine their efforts with some degree of reference to them. With this consummation the associational process is in full swing. All that follows is merely differentiated in detail. Interpretation of specific stages or areas of human experience is consequently a matter of qualitative and quantitative analysis of the experience in terms of these primary factors. History, or our own current experience, records its meaning in the degree in which it discloses the form, the quality, the force, and the proportions with which these various powers of the different elements and conditions of association participate in the given action.
To Small all knowledge was worth while and significant only in so far as it contributed to the betterment of society:[18]
The primary and chief function of science is to act as all men's proxy in finding out all that can be known about what sort of a world this is, and what we can do in it to make life most worth living.
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The only valid guide to social change is that which is to be found in the scientific knowledge available in the premises and presented by a co-operative group of scientists representing the various fields of knowledge involved in the situation to be diagnosed and controlled:[19]
The most reliable criterion of human values which science can propose would be the consensus of councils of scientists representing the largest possible variety of human interests, and co-operating to reduce their special judgments to a scale which would render their due to each of the interests in the total calculation.
This declaration of principles, and the program which it implies, would not be the abdication of science. It would be science stripped of cant. It would be science with its eyes open. It would be science with its decks cleared for action!
From this outlook there is nothing utopian whatsoever in anticipating the development of institutes of social science, composed not alone of academic men, by any means, but reinforced more and more by scientific men of action functioning as councils of elder statesmen, and focusing all the wisdom within human reach upon the conduct of men's affairs.
Conforming to the above criteria and objectives of useful knowledge in general, sociology is of ultimate importance only in so far is it furnishes the basis for an intelligent and efficient control of the social process and a progressive improvement of human culture and social institutions:[20]
If sociology is profitless, by all means let it alone. Wisdom is justified of her children, but she is always compromised when the unwise claim her maternity . . ..
Sociology has arrived at the outlook that human experience is the evolution of purposes in men, and of the action and reaction of men upon one another in pursuit of these changing purposes within conditions which are set by the reactions between men and physical nature . . ..
To do the right thing, except by accident, in any social situation, we must rightly think the situation. We must think it not merely in itself, but in all its connections. Sociology aims to become the lens through which such insight may be possible. There must be credible sociologists in order that there may be far-seeing economists and statesmen and moralists, and that each of us may be an intelligent specialist at his particular post.
Small suggests the following constructive and dynamic criteria as to the social basis of fundamental ethical judgments: it is the
( 38) function of the social process to increase the sum total of human satisfactions through an ever more perfect realization of vital human interests, and the valid criterion of good and bad is as to whether any act or policy speeds up or retards the social process:[21]
If we are justified in drawing any general conclusions whatever from human experience thus far, it is safe to say that the social process tends to put an increasing proportion of individuals in possession of all the goods which have been discovered by the experience of humanity as a whole, and that all social programs should be thought out with a view to promotion of this tendency . . ..
All the systems of ethics, and all the codes of morals, have been men's groupings toward ability to express this basic judgment: That is good, for me or for the world around me, which promotes the on-going of the social process. That is bad, for me or for the world around me, which retards the on-going of the social process.
While Small rightly contended that all worthwhile sociology must directly or indirectly contribute in differing degrees to the uplift of humanity, yet he conceded that not all uplift is sociology:[22]
It will continue to be our misfortune if we persist in using the word sociology as an omnibus designation for all the different functions which are performed by the different types of people who in general make desire for human improvement the ostensible motive for their efforts. Instead of designating in the judgment of scientific men such indiscriminate use of a term confuses and compromises everything to which it is applied. When Lester F. Ward was spending certain hours of each day contributing to paleo-botany, and certain other hours of the same days wrote The Psychic Factors of Civilization, he did not ask people to call paleo-botany social psychology nor vice versa. If he had he would simply have furnished an extreme illustration of the fallacy of the sociologists in trying to make terms for functions coincide with the persons functioning.
In spite, however, of his courageous assertion of the ultimate validity of scientific knowledge as the basis for social judgments, Small was never quite able to escape from the religious background of his career and training. This is well brought out in an eloquent paragraph from The Meaning of Social Science: [23]
No man has lived his life to the full who is not at last, in one preserve of his personality, a mystic. It is a grub's life not to feel out after the connec-
( 39)
-tions of what we can know with what we cannot know; after the fulfillment of what we have been or might have been in what we may be. From t he first to last religions have been men's more or less conscious attempts to give finite life its infinite rating. Science can never be an enemy of religion. Stop the stress and strain, the rush and roar, the fuss and bluff of modern life long enough for the deeply human in us to have its chance, and the more science we have the more are we awed and lured by the mystery beyond our ken; the more do the unsatisfied longings in us yearn for larger interpretation.
VI. GENERAL ESTIMATE OF SMALL'S PLACE IN AMERICAN SOCIAL SCIENCE
Briefly to summarize the contributions of Small to sociology which are embodied in his books, we should give first place to his work as a historian of sociological thought. Here be has been the most voluminous American contributor, and has rendered a real service in interpreting the developments of Germanic social science in such a fashion as to be of the greatest possible utility to American readers. This was an achievement of the highest importance, and in all probability was one which would not have been performed at all if Small had not executed it. He was also a tireless worker in promoting the cause of sociology in all of his writings. No other American writer devoted as much attention and energy to the program of justifying the existence of sociology as a subject of academic and professional standing and importance. He has been the leading propagandist of sociology in this country, employing the term "propagandist" in its best sense as a form of highly animated and enthusiastic education. He was likewise an indefatigable contributor to the indispensable, if somewhat thankless field of delimiting and justifying the province of sociology, and stating what he believed to be its objectives. If these last two contributions are interpreted, as Small himself interpreted them, to mean an elucidation of the problems of sociological methodology, then he has been our most voluminous contributor to this department of sociological endeavor.
In connection with the supplementary work of Ratzenhofer, he has excelled any other sociologist writing in the English language in the thoroughness of his elaboration of the interest concept and the group notion as sociological clues and formulas. No
( 40) other American sociologist has rivaled him iii the development of the concept of the social process or in his emphasis upon the significance of this dynamic interpretation. Finally, he has been exceeded only by Lester F. Ward in the persistence and ardor of his contention that sociology is to be justified, if at all, through its potential and ultimate contributions to the triumph of scientifically guided social betterment. In other words, he ever insisted that, in its fundamental significance, sociology is social ethics. He gave to this latter subject a broad foundation which distinguished it from its usual interpretation and implication as the rationalized pseudo-scientific basis of the operations of the prohibitionist, vice-crusader, and smut-censor. He made it a dynamic and comprehensive avenue to the general elevation of society and the deepening and expansion of the meaning and utility of human life and social institutions. His writings were an appropriate and genuine outgrowth of his personality. This high ethical import in his writings was consistent with a personal character of real nobility and unusual generosity.
Significant as are the above contributions of Small to sociology through the written word, the writer of this article is thoroughly convinced that his permanent influence upon sociology through his writings will ultimately prove slight and ephemeral as compared with the impress of his personality and his personal activities upon the development of the sociological movement. In other words, Small was a much more significant figure in the movement and campaign to establish sociology as a valid field of academic and professional endeavor than he was in sociological literature, magisterial though his position may be in this latter regard.
First and foremost in determining Small's place in sociology, the writer would put his methods, ideals, and influence as a teacher. He possessed a singularly gracious personality, combined with an impressive dignity which was never forbidding. He at once secured the confidence of his students, and his many duties never led him into carelessness or neglect with respect to the legitimate needs of his classes. He carried a relatively heavy teaching schedule throughout all of his teaching career, in spite of the fact that he was not only head of the department of sociology and editor-in-
( 41) chief of the American Journal of Sociology, but also dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Literature for nearly twenty years having been appointed in 1905. He introduced thousands of students to the sociological idea, and he trained most of the professional teachers of sociology who are now expounding the old secrets of the science between the Alleghenies and the Pacific. Particularly significant as an outgrowth of his teaching activities, his organization of the Chicago department of sociology, the only adequate and well-balanced faculty of sociology which has yet graced a graduate school in the United States. Small was a man of real tolerance of viewpoint and true catholicity of interests, and this led him to build up a sociology department that represented a great diversity of points of view and specialized interests. This was of particular value to Chicago students, and it also served to disseminate through the country a broad conception of the nature of sociology and a wide array of facts as embodied in its subject matter. This was of immensely greater value than the inculcation of the essential elements in any single system of sociology, however impressive that system might be. The diverse and important contributions of the various members of the Chicago department were reflected and embodied in the training and equipment of the many students who ranged themselves under the instruction of the Chicago staff, and carried the knowledge thus acquired to teaching-posts in all parts of the country.
Next to his teaching and departmental supervision Small's most important work in promoting sociology lay in his founding and editing of the American Journal of Sociology. Established in 1895, this has been by all odds the most important sociological journal in the world during the last twenty-five years. While now in part eclipsed by the Journal of Social Forces, it still carries more important monographic articles than Social Forces, and must be reckoned the more significant of the two in respect to a discussion and exposition of theoretical issues in the sociological field. The American Journal of Sociology has served as a medium of expression for sociologists the world over. Small's extensive acquaintance with European literature and personalities was of vital importance here in securing contributions from the leading European sociolo-
( 42) -gists. It also furnished a place where many ambitious young sociologists risked their first published ventures in the field. Small was never pontifical as an editor, and he encouraged young men to publish their materials in his journal if their contributions were monographs of merit. It would be an interesting exercise to ascertain just how many important American sociologists of the younger generation first broke ground in a literary way in the American Journal. Finally, while in recent years a combination of limitations of space and a great increase in the rate of publication of sociological books have tended to make the reviews in Small's journal very brief and sometimes casual, yet for a generation this periodical was almost the only place in which American readers could acquaint themselves with the progress of sociological literature. There cannot be any doubt whatever that Small's service to the development of sociology through his editing of the American Journal of Sociology was in itself of greater consequence than all of his own books combined.
In the third place, Small was a leading figure in the growth of modern sociology through his work in connection with the American Sociological Society and its meetings and activities. This society was founded in Baltimore in 1905, and has constituted the chief arena for sociological discussion and for the clarification of sociological opinion since that time. It has also furnished the nucleus for the organization of special committees of sociologists for the promotion of research and teaching. The papers read at the annual meetings have been published with unusual completeness in the so-called "Annual Publications" of the Society. They constitute an admirable source for the history of sociological opinion in this country, as well as containing much information upon a great variety of technical and special problems. It will scarcely be denied by anybody that Small carried more of the burdens. associated with the work of the Society than any other three men in the organization, and to him also fell, to a large extent, the task of editing for publication the papers read at the annual meetings. Small was always very active at these annual meetings, promoting discussion both in the formal sessions and in informal gatherings. He was much more in his element here than in the compilation of
( 43) learned treatises. Then, his extensive travels and lecturing in that country and abroad served to promote the exchange of opinion, and information between American and European social scientists. Likewise, he was the cause of bringing to Chicago and elsewhere in this country a number of distinguished European social scientists who left their impress upon this side of the Atlantic.
Finally, the writer is going to risk what to many will seem a startling, if not absurd contention, namely, that in his written works, and even more in his teaching, Small's most valuable and profound doctrinal and methodological contributions were made to the fields of economics and political science rather than to sociology. His Adam Smith, his Between Eras, his Cameralists, and much of his Origins of Sociology constitute cardinal contributions to institutional economics. If he had seen fit to put into print the' well-organized material from which he gave his famous course on the "Conflict of Classes" he would have produced a work which would have made him a rival of Veblen as an original and courageous economist. His course on Karl Marx and his doctrines and influence was likewise chiefly an exercise in economic dynamics and the history of economic thought. In the field of political science his General Sociology may safely be called the most profound book published on the subject in this country between Calhoun's Disquisition of Government and A. F. Bentley's Process of Government, the latter of which was based upon the contributions of Small and Ratzenhofer.[24] Throughout most of his teaching career he gave a course under various titles which dealt with the sociological basis of the state and civic policy. There is little doubt that a half-century hence the historical student of American political theory will find much more of permanent value in this field in Small's writings than in those of a dozen critical contemporaries who were distinguished political scientists of the conventional pattern. Small is likely to have a high place in the history of functional po-
(44) -litical science in the United Slates. In other words, while it was a great gain for sociology that Small devoted his professional life primarily to this subject, it was a real misfortune to Small that he did not occupy himself more specifically with either economics or political science. His mind was better adapted for this type of analysis than for work in the more highly theoretical field of general sociology. Likewise, he would have been a far better stylist in these fields, for in these less theoretical and abstract subjects his thinking was much more clear, direct, and precise. In short, his work would have been more profound, articulate, and influential.
Finally, one cannot overlook Small's contributions to ethics. He was truly a pioneer in the foundation of the sociological attitude toward ethics. He powerfully promoted the movement to take the subject out of supernaturalism and metaphysics, as well as to remove it from the narrow conception of a rigid guide for an archaic view of sexual purity. He worked to identify it instead with the effort to promote a broader and more comprehensive view of social justice and human happiness.
As a final estimate of Small's place in American sociology, the present writer would hold that among the first generation of our sociologists Small's place in advancing the subject matter of sociology is second only to that of Ward and Giddings, while in promoting the professional and academic standing of the subject he was without any close rival.
