American Sociology
Ernest W. Burgess
Howard Odum
Of the senior American sociologists who were born beyond the borders of the United States, four became president of the American Sociological Society. These were all heads or chairmen of departments in American universities: James Q. Dealey at Brown, E. W. Burgess at Chicago, R. M. Maclver at Columbia, and Louis Wirth at Chicago. Other heads of departments at America's largest institutions who were not native included Pitirim Sorokin, chairman at Harvard, Maurice Davie of Yale, and Paul Lazarsfeld of Columbia.
Ernest W. Burgess, the twenty-fourth president of the Society, continued the University of Chicago succession, having received his Ph.D. degree in 1913, twenty-seven years after his birth in Ontario, Canada, in 1886. He came to the University of Chicago by way of Oklahoma, graduating in 1908 from Kingfisher College, and from Ohio where he was instructor in Toledo University in 1912–13. Before coming back to the University of Chicago where "Park and Burgess" became the best-known pair of American sociologists in the textbook world, he was assistant professor of sociology at Kansas from 1913 to 1915, and at Ohio State in 1915–16. He was then assistant professor at Chicago from 1916 to 1921, associate professor from 1921 to 1927 and professor since 1927.
Like his colleagues at Chicago and in other urban universities he was called on to participate in numerous activities in closely related fields of endeavor. He was acting director and director of the Behavior Research Fund of Chicago from 1930 to 1939. He was secretary of the Chicago Area Project, 1934–43; secretary of the National Conference on Family Relations, 1938–41; president in 1942. He was a member of the Chicago Recreation Commission, the Chicago Crime Commission, and the Citizens Association of Chicago. Before being elected president of the American Sociological Society, he was its secretary-treasurer from 1921 to 1930, and he was editor of The American journal of Sociology from 1936 to 1940. He was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Statistical Association, the Sociological Re-search Association (president, 1942), Social Science Research Council (chairman, 1945–46), American Association of Social Workers, the Mental Hygiene Association.
Returning now to an earlier statement in which Park and Burgess
( 169) were featured, it seems likely that their text Introduction to the Science of Sociology, published in 1921, was the most influential sociology text of any that had been written and perhaps of any that has yet been published. This was true in a number of ways. In the first place, the book immediately recaptured the Chicago tradition for its great body of graduates in sociology and became the "Bible of Sociology" for them all. That is, the Park and Burgess book was a major contribution from the workshops of the Chicago sociologists worthy of Small and Vincent and Thomas and carried the science of sociology far beyond their advanced stages. The book was so well organized and so mature and comprehensive that, although it was intended as an introductory text, it was usually required of all graduate students in classes taught by Chicago alumni. It put together the concepts of the social process, relying on the work, not only of Small's beginnings, but of Cooley and Ross. Only Ross has approached the comprehensiveness of its treatment of social interaction and social process. Many years later, and continuously, texts like Kimball Young's continued to develop and to adapt the elements in this text, and many students of race and minority groups drew on its concepts of conflict, accommodation, assimilation, acculturation, amalgamation, even as Park himself, a student of race relations, sought to utilize their concepts.
Burgess also collaborated with Park in The City in 1925. This book, while largely a recording of the results of current studies, was also a pioneer in the new field of human ecology being developed at the University of Chicago. This, again, set the Chicago group in a new span of leadership, which was continued for many years in their urban studies. McKenzie at Michigan, Wirth at Chicago, Hollingshead at Indiana and Yale continued the direct succession, while scores of younger sociologists made "ecological studies" which, although often little more than studies of the spatial distribution of phenomena in cities, nevertheless built up the prestige and following of the Chicago group to such an extent that Bernard later was to lead a revolution against its powerful influence.
In many ways it may be said that the strong points of Burgess were to be found in his work as collaborator, in his almost limitless capacity and will to cooperate and in his tireless efforts in the direction of students, in meeting with committees and action groups, in his capacity as editor, and in projecting studies and programs of work. Scarcely less
( 170) definitive, in that it immediately ranked Burgess at the top of the sociologists utilizing new objective ways of measurement, was his Predicting Success or Failure in Marriage, in collaboration with Leonard Cottrell of Cornell who was to become the president of the American Sociological Society in 1950. Other collaborations included Personality and the Social Group with Herbert Blumer; The Belleville Survey with J. J. Sippy; The Lawrence Survey with F. W. Blackmar.
As a product of the 1934 meeting of the American Sociological Society of which he was president that year, Burgess edited and published the proceedings in 1935 under the title, The Human Side of Planning. In this volume appeared his presidential address entitled "Social Planning and the Mores," in which he concluded that the mores and backgrounds of America were such that democratic planning could be achieved and that the United States might thus lead the world of nations. This speech was addressed to the New Deal era and was therefore somewhat prophetic of the need for planning in the "one world"order that was to develop after World War II.
In an ex-officio way Burgess has maintained his place in the influence upon American sociology in several ways. He was co-author of the most influential of all general textbooks, he was editor of The American journal of Sociology, following Small and Faris; he was chairman of America's most prolific department of sociology, along with Faris and Ogburn; and he was generous in his services on committees and commissions and in having the good will of professional folk in many fields. His voluntary services as secretary of the American Sociological Society for so many years has not been equaled.
Burgess' contributions might be said to be about equally distributed in a half dozen areas. First, his theory and concept of sociology may be summarized simply in his statement that "from a philosophy of society sociology is emerging into a science of society." Burgess was generally credited with the greater part of the work of completing the Park and Burgess magnum opus, while Park was supposed to have set up the main frame of reference and outlines. In a second area, namely in the study of marriage and the family and in his participation in local and national family organization efforts, Burgess' work came to be known as one of the special sources in this field. Approximately a fourth of his published articles were in this field. His third special area was in the field
( 171) of delinquency in which about a fifth of his articles were published, and in which he did yeoman service in committees, conferences, and organizations. A fourth field was personality study in relation to social adjustment, a field in which, again, about a fifth of his articles were published.
Burgess contributed some ten articles on research and methodology, besides several others relating to methods in social work, criminology, and community study, in addition to the chapter on "Social Research" in Twentieth Century Sociology, summarized in Chapter 15 of this book. He wrote no less than six articles dealing with social work interrelations with sociology and contributed a number of biographical sketches, including one on Frank W. Blackmar.