William Graham Sumner

Born: Paterson, New Jersey; October 30, 1840
Died: Englewood, New Jersey; April 12, 1910

Sumner, a professor of political and social science at Yale from 1872 until his death was one of the most masterful teachers and scholars of his generation and the nineteenth century's leading exponent of laissez-faire, the position that government should intervene as little as possible in economic affairs.

Sumner was raised in Hartford, where his father was employed by the Hartford and New Haven Railroad Company, and was graduated with distinction from Yale in 1863. He studied for the ministry in Germany and England, was a tutor at Yale from 1866 to 1869, and was ordained a priest in the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1869. Although Sumner was a successful cleric, serving as rector of the Church of the Redeemer in Morristown, New Jersey, from 1870 to 1872, he grew increasingly interested in social and economic subjects and accepted a chair at Yale in political and social science in 1872.

Sumner's distinctions at Yale were many. He was perhaps Yale's most sought after teacher—it was said that one had not truly qualified for a Yale degree without having been in a Sumner class. Impressive in appearance—tall, fastidiously dressed, "magnificently bald," and iron-voiced, Sumner taught with vigor and courage, attacking weak thinking whether rooted in sentimentality or tradition. His scholarship was substantial, including biographies of Andrew Jackson (1882), Alexander Hamilton (1890), and Robert Morris (1892); A History of American Currency (1874); and Folkways (1907), a pioneering work in sociology.

Sumner's significance beyond the academic world was related to his outspoken acceptance of laissez-faire. A Social Darwinist who believed that man must function within an environment unfettered by human attempts to influence "the natural laws of social development," Sumner opposed trade unions, social legislation, and government regulation of the economy. Sumner's aversion to departures from laissez-faire could be seen in the late 1870s when he gave testimony to the Select Committee on Depression in Labor and Business, a committee of the House of Representatives formed to investigate causes and possible cures for the Depression of the 1870's triggered by the Panic of 1873. In an exchange with Congressman William Whitney Rice (1826-1896) of Worcester, Massachusetts, Sumner must have won the admiration of the business community of Connecticut—and the nation. When asked by Rice if government could hire workers unemployed because of the introduction of new machinery, Sumner responded that the worker must...make the best of circumstances" and rely upon his own resourcefulness.

For Further Reading

Curtis, Bruce. William Graham Sumner. Boston, 1981.

Hofstadter, Richard. Social Darwinism in American Thought. Philadelphia, 1944.

McCloskey, Robert Green. American Conservatism in the Age of Enterprise: A Study of William Graham Sumner, Stephen J. Field, and Andrew Carnegie. New York, 1951.

Starr, H. E. William G. Sumner. New York, 1925.

Entry by David M. Roth.

* Entry under revision.